1 .\" $Id: mandoc.1,v 1.217 2017/07/20 15:26:41 schwarze Exp $
3 .\" Copyright (c) 2009, 2010, 2011 Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv>
4 .\" Copyright (c) 2012, 2014-2017 Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>
6 .\" Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
7 .\" purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
8 .\" copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
10 .\" THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
11 .\" WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
12 .\" MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
13 .\" ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
14 .\" WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
15 .\" ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
16 .\" OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
18 .Dd $Mdocdate: July 20 2017 $
23 .Nd format manual pages
27 .Op Fl I Cm os Ns = Ns Ar name
39 manual pages for display.
47 text from stdin and produces
51 The options are as follows:
54 If the standard output is a terminal device and
58 to paginate the output, just like
62 Copy the formatted manual pages to the standard output without using
66 It can be specified to override
68 .It Fl I Cm os Ns = Ns Ar name
69 Override the default operating system
79 Specify the input encoding.
87 If not specified, autodetection uses the first match in the following
91 If the first three bytes of the input file are the UTF-8 byte order
92 mark (BOM, 0xefbbbf), input is interpreted as
95 If the first or second line of the input file matches the
99 .D1 .\e" -*- Oo ...; Oc coding: Ar encoding ; No -*-
101 then input is interpreted according to
104 If the first non-ASCII byte in the file introduces a valid UTF-8
105 sequence, input is interpreted as
108 Otherwise, input is interpreted as
114 all input files are interpreted as
118 all input files are interpreted as
120 By default, the input language is automatically detected for each file:
121 if the the first macro is
127 parser is used; otherwise, the
130 With other arguments,
134 Comma-separated output options.
139 for available formats.
143 Specify the minimum message
145 to be reported on the standard error output and to affect the exit status.
157 level automatically derives the operating system from the contents of the
161 command line option, or from the
170 that bypass autodetection and request validation of base system
171 conventions for a particular operating system.
189 to exit after parsing a file that causes warnings or errors of at least
191 No formatted output will be produced from that file.
196 are requested, they can be joined with a comma, for example
197 .Fl W Cm error , Ns Cm stop .
199 Read input from zero or more files.
200 If unspecified, reads from stdin.
201 If multiple files are specified,
203 will halt with the first failed parse.
208 are also supported and are documented in man(1).
215 also supports the options
222 are mutually exclusive and override each other.
226 utility accepts the following
228 arguments, which correspond to output modes:
229 .Bl -tag -width "-T markdown"
231 Produce 7-bit ASCII output.
235 Produce HTML5, CSS1, and MathML output.
239 Parse only: produce no output.
242 and redirects parser messages, which usually appear
243 on standard error output, to standard output.
245 Encode output using the current locale.
260 .Sx Markdown Output .
266 Produce PostScript output.
268 .Sx PostScript Output .
270 Produce an indented parse tree.
272 .Sx Syntax tree output .
274 Encode output in the UTF\-8 multi-byte format.
279 If multiple input files are specified, these will be processed by the
280 corresponding filter in-order.
284 is rendered in standard 7-bit ASCII documented in
287 Font styles are applied by using back-spaced encoding such that an
291 .Sq _ Ns \e[bs] Ns c ,
294 is the back-space character number 8.
295 Emboldened characters are rendered as
296 .Sq c Ns \e[bs] Ns c .
298 The special characters documented in
300 are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent.
302 Output width is limited to 78 visible columns unless literal input lines
307 arguments are accepted:
309 .It Cm indent Ns = Ns Ar indent
310 The left margin for normal text is set to
312 blank characters instead of the default of five for
316 Increasing this is not recommended; it may result in degraded formatting,
317 for example overfull lines or ugly line breaks.
318 .It Cm width Ns = Ns Ar width
319 The output width is set to
325 conforms to HTML5 using optional self-closing tags.
326 Default styles use only CSS1.
327 Equations rendered from
333 file documents style-sheet classes available for customising output.
334 If a style-sheet is not specified with
337 defaults to simple output (via an embedded style-sheet)
338 readable in any graphical or text-based web
341 Special characters are rendered in decimal-encoded UTF\-8.
345 arguments are accepted:
348 Omit the <!DOCTYPE> declaration and the <html>, <head>, and <body>
349 elements and only emit the subtree below the <body> element.
352 argument will be ignored.
353 This is useful when embedding manual content within existing documents.
354 .It Cm includes Ns = Ns Ar fmt
359 is used as a template for linked header files (usually via the
364 are replaced with the include filename.
365 The default is not to present a
367 .It Cm man Ns = Ns Ar fmt
371 .Ar ../html%S/%N.%S.html ,
372 is used as a template for linked manuals (usually via the
379 are replaced with the linked manual's name and section, respectively.
380 If no section is included, section 1 is assumed.
381 The default is not to
383 .It Cm style Ns = Ns Ar style.css
386 is used for an external style-sheet.
387 This must be a valid absolute or
391 Locale-depending output encoding is triggered with
395 This option is not available on all systems: systems without locale
396 support, or those whose internal representation is not natively UCS-4,
401 for font style specification and available command-line arguments.
403 Translate input format into
406 This is useful for distributing manual sources to legacy systems
413 is passed as input, it is translated into
415 If the input format is
417 the input is copied to the output, expanding any
421 The parser is also run, and as usual, the
425 are displayed before copying the input to the output.
432 .Lk http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax.text\
433 "John Gruber's 2004 specification" .
434 The output also almost conforms to the
435 .Lk http://commonmark.org/ CommonMark
438 The character set used for the markdown output is ASCII.
439 Non-ASCII characters are encoded as HTML entities.
440 Since that is not possible in literal font contexts, because these
441 are rendered as code spans and code blocks in the markdown output,
442 non-ASCII characters are transliterated to ASCII approximations in
445 Markdown is a very weak markup language, so all semantic markup is
446 lost, and even part of the presentational markup may be lost.
447 Do not use this as an intermediate step in converting to HTML;
457 input languages are not supported by
461 PDF-1.1 output may be generated by
464 .Sx PostScript Output
467 arguments and defaults.
468 .Ss PostScript Output
471 Level-2 pages may be generated by
473 Output pages default to letter sized and are rendered in the Times font
475 Margins are calculated as 1/9 the page length and width.
478 Special characters are rendered as in
483 arguments are accepted:
485 .It Cm paper Ns = Ns Ar name
495 You may also manually specify dimensions as
497 width by height in millimetres.
498 If an unknown value is encountered,
505 to force a UTF\-8 locale.
508 for details and options.
509 .Ss Syntax tree output
512 to show a human readable representation of the syntax tree.
513 It is useful for debugging the source code of manual pages.
514 The exact format is subject to change, so don't write parsers for it.
516 The first paragraph shows meta data found in the
521 line, or the fallbacks used.
523 In the tree dump, each output line shows one syntax tree node.
524 Child nodes are indented with respect to their parent node.
529 For macro nodes, the macro name; for text and
532 There is a special format for
536 Node type (text, elem, block, head, body, body-end, tail, tbl, eqn).
541 An opening parenthesis if the node is an opening delimiter.
543 An asterisk if the node starts a new input line.
545 The input line number (starting at one).
549 The input column number (starting at one).
551 A closing parenthesis if the node is a closing delimiter.
553 A full stop if the node ends a sentence.
555 BROKEN if the node is a block broken by another block.
557 NOSRC if the node is not in the input file,
558 but automatically generated from macros.
560 NOPRT if the node is not supposed to generate output
561 for any output format.
567 argument is accepted:
570 Skip validation and show the unvalidated syntax tree.
571 This can help to find out whether a given behaviour is caused by
572 the parser or by the validator.
573 Meta data is not available in this case.
576 .Bl -tag -width MANPAGER
578 Any non-empty value of the environment variable
580 is used instead of the standard pagination program,
591 Specifies the pagination program to use when
594 If neither PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined,
607 utility exits with one of the following values, controlled by the message
613 .Bl -tag -width Ds -compact
615 No base system convention violations, style suggestions, warnings,
616 or errors occurred, or those that did were ignored because they
617 were lower than the requested
620 At least one base system convention violation or style suggestion
621 occurred, but no warning or error, and
627 At least one warning occurred, but no error, and
633 At least one parsing error occurred,
634 but no unsupported feature was encountered, and
640 At least one unsupported feature was encountered, and
646 Invalid command line arguments were specified.
647 No input files have been read.
649 An operating system error occurred, for example exhaustion
650 of memory, file descriptors, or process table entries.
653 to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file.
661 To page manuals to the terminal:
663 .Dl $ mandoc -l mandoc.1 man.1 apropos.1 makewhatis.8
665 To produce HTML manuals with
669 .Dl $ mandoc \-T html -O style=mandoc.css mdoc.7 \*(Gt mdoc.7.html
671 To check over a large set of manuals:
673 .Dl $ mandoc \-T lint \(gafind /usr/src -name \e*\e.[1-9]\(ga
675 To produce a series of PostScript manuals for A4 paper:
677 .Dl $ mandoc \-T ps \-O paper=a4 mdoc.7 man.7 \*(Gt manuals.ps
683 format, for use on systems lacking an
687 .Dl $ mandoc \-T man foo.mdoc \*(Gt foo.man
689 Messages displayed by
692 .Bd -ragged -offset indent
694 .Ar file : Ns Ar line : Ns Ar column : level : message : macro args
698 Line and column numbers start at 1.
699 Both are omitted for messages referring to an input file as a whole.
700 Macro names and arguments are omitted where meaningless.
703 operating system specifier is omitted for messages that are relevant
704 for all operating systems.
705 Fatal messages about invalid command line arguments
706 or operating system errors, for example when memory is exhausted,
713 Message levels have the following meanings:
714 .Bl -tag -width "warning"
716 An input file uses unsupported low-level
719 The output may be incomplete and/or misformatted,
720 so using GNU troff instead of
722 to process the file may be preferable.
724 Indicates a risk of information loss or severe misformatting,
725 in most cases caused by serious syntax errors.
727 Indicates a risk that the information shown or its formatting
728 may mismatch the author's intent in minor ways.
729 Additionally, syntax errors are classified at least as warnings,
730 even if they do not usually cause misformatting.
732 An input file uses dubious or discouraged style.
733 This is not a complaint about the syntax, and probably neither
734 formatting nor portability are in danger.
735 While great care is taken to avoid false positives on the higher
738 level tries to reduce the probability that issues go unnoticed,
739 so it may occasionally issue bogus suggestions.
740 Please use your good judgement to decide whether any particular
742 suggestion really justifies a change to the input file.
744 A convertion used in the base system of a specific operating system
746 These are not markup mistakes, and neither the quality of formatting
747 nor portability are in danger.
750 level are printed with the more intuitive
763 levels except those about non-existent or unreadable input files
764 are hidden unless their level, or a lower level, is requested using a
770 As indicated below, all
774 checks are only performed if a specific operating system name occurs
775 in the arguments of the
777 command line option, of the
781 command line option, or, if neither are present, in the return value
785 .Ss Conventions for base system manuals
787 .It Sy "Mdocdate found"
793 keyword substitution, which is not supported by the
796 Consider using the conventional
799 .It Sy "Mdocdate missing"
803 macro does not use CVS
805 keyword substitution, but using it is conventionally expected in the
808 .It Sy "unknown architecture"
810 The third argument of the
812 macro does not match any of the architectures this operating system
814 .It Sy "operating system explicitly specified"
818 macro has an argument.
819 In the base system, it is conventionally left blank.
820 .It Sy "RCS id missing"
822 The manual page lacks the comment line with the RCS identifier
827 keyword substitution as conventionally used in these operating systems.
828 .It Sy "referenced manual not found"
832 macro references a manual page that is not found in the base system.
833 The path to look for base system manuals is configurable at compile
835 .Pa /usr/share/man : /usr/X11R6/man .
837 .Ss Style suggestions
839 .It Sy "legacy man(7) date format"
843 macro uses the legacy
847 Consider using the conventional
852 .It Sy "lower case character in document title"
854 The title is still used as given in the
859 .It Sy "duplicate RCS id"
860 A single manual page contains two copies of the RCS identifier for
861 the same operating system.
862 Consider deleting the later instance and moving the first one up
863 to the top of the page.
864 .It Sy "typo in section name"
866 Fuzzy string matching revealed that the argument of an
868 macro is similar, but not identical to a standard section name.
869 .It Sy "unterminated quoted argument"
871 Macro arguments can be enclosed in double quote characters
872 such that space characters and macro names contained in the quoted
873 argument need not be escaped.
874 The closing quote of the last argument of a macro can be omitted.
875 However, omitting it is not recommended because it makes the code
877 .It Sy "useless macro"
885 Simply delete it: it serves no useful purpose.
886 .It Sy "consider using OS macro"
888 A string was found in plain text or in a
890 macro that could be represented using
896 .It Sy "errnos out of order"
902 list are not in alphabetical order.
903 .It Sy "duplicate errno"
907 list contains two consecutive
909 entries describing the same
912 .It Sy "trailing delimiter"
914 The last argument of an
915 .Ic \&Ex , \&Fo , \&Nd , \&Nm , \&Os , \&Sh , \&Ss , \&St ,
918 macro ends with a trailing delimiter.
919 This is usually bad style and often indicates typos.
920 Most likely, the delimiter can be removed.
921 .It Sy "no blank before trailing delimiter"
923 The last argument of a macro that supports trailing delimiter
924 arguments is longer than one byte and ends with a trailing delimiter.
925 Consider inserting a blank such that the delimiter becomes a separate
926 argument, thus moving it out of the scope of the macro.
927 .It Sy "fill mode already enabled, skipping"
931 request occurs even though the document is still in fill mode,
932 or already switched back to fill mode.
934 .It Sy "fill mode already disabled, skipping"
938 request occurs even though the document already switched to no-fill mode
939 and did not switch back to fill mode yet.
941 .It Sy "function name without markup"
943 A word followed by an empty pair of parentheses occurs on a text line.
949 .It Sy "whitespace at end of input line"
950 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
951 Whitespace at the end of input lines is almost never semantically
952 significant \(em but in the odd case where it might be, it is
953 extremely confusing when reviewing and maintaining documents.
954 .It Sy "bad comment style"
956 Comment lines start with a dot, a backslash, and a double-quote character.
959 utility treats the line as a comment line even without the backslash,
960 but leaving out the backslash might not be portable.
962 .Ss Warnings related to the document prologue
964 .It Sy "missing manual title, using UNTITLED"
968 macro has no arguments, or there is no
970 macro before the first non-prologue macro.
971 .It Sy "missing manual title, using \(dq\(dq"
975 macro, or it has no arguments.
976 .It Sy "missing manual section, using \(dq\(dq"
982 macro lacks the mandatory section argument.
983 .It Sy "unknown manual section"
985 The section number in a
987 line is invalid, but still used.
988 .It Sy "missing date, using today's date"
990 The document was parsed as
996 macro has no arguments or only empty arguments;
997 or the document was parsed as
1003 macro has less than three arguments or its third argument is empty.
1004 .It Sy "cannot parse date, using it verbatim"
1010 macro does not follow the conventional format.
1011 .It Sy "date in the future, using it anyway"
1017 macro is more than a day ahead of the current system
1019 .It Sy "missing Os macro, using \(dq\(dq"
1021 The default or current system is not shown in this case.
1022 .It Sy "late prologue macro"
1028 macro occurs after some non-prologue macro, but still takes effect.
1029 .It Sy "prologue macros out of order"
1031 The prologue macros are not given in the conventional order
1035 All three macros are used even when given in another order.
1037 .Ss Warnings regarding document structure
1039 .It Sy ".so is fragile, better use ln(1)"
1041 Including files only works when the parser program runs with the correct
1042 current working directory.
1043 .It Sy "no document body"
1045 The document body contains neither text nor macros.
1046 An empty document is shown, consisting only of a header and a footer line.
1047 .It Sy "content before first section header"
1049 Some macros or text precede the first
1054 The offending macros and text are parsed and added to the top level
1055 of the syntax tree, outside any section block.
1056 .It Sy "first section is not NAME"
1058 The argument of the first
1066 .It Sy "NAME section without Nm before Nd"
1068 The NAME section does not contain any
1070 child macro before the first
1073 .It Sy "NAME section without description"
1075 The NAME section lacks the mandatory
1078 .It Sy "description not at the end of NAME"
1080 The NAME section does contain an
1082 child macro, but other content follows it.
1083 .It Sy "bad NAME section content"
1085 The NAME section contains plain text or macros other than
1089 .It Sy "missing comma before name"
1091 The NAME section contains an
1093 macro that is neither the first one nor preceded by a comma.
1094 .It Sy "missing description line, using \(dq\(dq"
1098 macro lacks the required argument.
1099 The title line of the manual will end after the dash.
1100 .It Sy "description line outside NAME section"
1104 macro appears outside the NAME section.
1105 The arguments are printed anyway and the following text is used for
1107 but none of that behaviour is portable.
1108 .It Sy "sections out of conventional order"
1110 A standard section occurs after another section it usually precedes.
1111 All section titles are used as given,
1112 and the order of sections is not changed.
1113 .It Sy "duplicate section title"
1115 The same standard section title occurs more than once.
1116 .It Sy "unexpected section"
1118 A standard section header occurs in a section of the manual
1119 where it normally isn't useful.
1120 .It Sy "cross reference to self"
1124 macro refers to a name and section matching the section of the present
1125 manual page and a name mentioned in an
1127 macro in the NAME or SYNOPSIS section, or in an
1131 macro in the SYNOPSIS.
1138 .It Sy "unusual Xr order"
1140 In the SEE ALSO section, an
1142 macro with a lower section number follows one with a higher number,
1145 macros referring to the same section are out of alphabetical order.
1146 .It Sy "unusual Xr punctuation"
1148 In the SEE ALSO section, punctuation between two
1150 macros differs from a single comma, or there is trailing punctuation
1154 .It Sy "AUTHORS section without An macro"
1156 An AUTHORS sections contains no
1158 macros, or only empty ones.
1159 Probably, there are author names lacking markup.
1161 .Ss "Warnings related to macros and nesting"
1163 .It Sy "obsolete macro"
1167 manual for replacements.
1168 .It Sy "macro neither callable nor escaped"
1170 The name of a macro that is not callable appears on a macro line.
1171 It is printed verbatim.
1172 If the intention is to call it, move it to its own input line;
1173 otherwise, escape it by prepending
1175 .It Sy "skipping paragraph macro"
1178 documents, this happens
1181 at the beginning and end of sections and subsections
1183 right before non-compact lists and displays
1185 at the end of items in non-column, non-compact lists
1187 and for multiple consecutive paragraph macros.
1191 documents, it happens
1203 macros having neither head nor body arguments
1214 .It Sy "moving paragraph macro out of list"
1218 list contains a trailing paragraph macro.
1219 The paragraph macro is moved after the end of the list.
1220 .It Sy "skipping no-space macro"
1222 An input line begins with an
1224 macro, or the next argument after an
1226 macro is an isolated closing delimiter.
1227 The macro is ignored.
1228 .It Sy "blocks badly nested"
1230 If two blocks intersect, one should completely contain the other.
1231 Otherwise, rendered output is likely to look strange in any output
1232 format, and rendering in SGML-based output formats is likely to be
1233 outright wrong because such languages do not support badly nested
1235 Typical examples of badly nested blocks are
1236 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bo \&Ac \&Bc
1238 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bq \&Ac .
1246 .It Sy "nested displays are not portable"
1253 display occurs nested inside another
1258 but fails with most other implementations.
1259 .It Sy "moving content out of list"
1263 list block contains text or macros before the first
1266 The offending children are moved before the beginning of the list.
1267 .It Sy "first macro on line"
1272 macro occurs as the first macro on a line, which is not portable.
1273 .It Sy "line scope broken"
1275 While parsing the next-line scope of the previous macro,
1276 another macro is found that prematurely terminates the previous one.
1277 The previous, interrupted macro is deleted from the parse tree.
1279 .Ss "Warnings related to missing arguments"
1281 .It Sy "skipping empty request"
1283 The macro name is missing from a macro definition request,
1286 control statement or operation keyword lacks its required argument.
1287 .It Sy "conditional request controls empty scope"
1289 A conditional request is only useful if any of the following
1290 follows it on the same logical input line:
1295 keyword to open a multi-line scope.
1297 A request or macro or some text, resulting in a single-line scope.
1299 The immediate end of the logical line without any intervening whitespace,
1300 resulting in next-line scope.
1302 Here, a conditional request is followed by trailing whitespace only,
1303 and there is no other content on its logical input line.
1304 Note that it doesn't matter whether the logical input line is split
1305 across multiple physical input lines using
1307 line continuation characters.
1308 This is one of the rare cases
1309 where trailing whitespace is syntactically significant.
1310 The conditional request controls a scope containing whitespace only,
1311 so it is unlikely to have a significant effect,
1312 except that it may control a following
1315 .It Sy "skipping empty macro"
1317 The indicated macro has no arguments and hence no effect.
1318 .It Sy "empty block"
1330 block contains nothing in its body and will produce no output.
1331 .It Sy "empty argument, using 0n"
1333 The required width is missing after
1340 .It Sy "missing display type, using -ragged"
1344 macro is invoked without the required display type.
1345 .It Sy "list type is not the first argument"
1349 macro, at least one other argument precedes the type argument.
1352 utility copes with any argument order, but some other
1354 implementations do not.
1355 .It Sy "missing -width in -tag list, using 8n"
1364 .It Sy "missing utility name, using \(dq\(dq"
1368 macro is called without an argument before
1370 has first been called with an argument.
1371 .It Sy "missing function name, using \(dq\(dq"
1375 macro is called without an argument.
1376 No function name is printed.
1377 .It Sy "empty head in list item"
1389 macro lacks the required argument.
1390 The item head is left empty.
1391 .It Sy "empty list item"
1403 An empty list item is shown.
1404 .It Sy "missing argument, using next line"
1410 list has no arguments.
1413 uses the text or macros of the following line, if any, for the cell,
1414 other formatters may misformat the list.
1415 .It Sy "missing font type, using \efR"
1419 macro has no argument.
1420 It switches to the default font.
1421 .It Sy "unknown font type, using \efR"
1425 argument is invalid.
1426 The default font is used instead.
1427 .It Sy "nothing follows prefix"
1431 macro has no argument, or only one argument and no macro follows
1432 on the same input line.
1433 This defeats its purpose; in particular, spacing is not suppressed
1434 before the text or macros following on the next input line.
1435 .It Sy "empty reference block"
1439 macro is immediately followed by an
1441 macro on the next input line.
1442 Such an empty block does not produce any output.
1443 .It Sy "missing section argument"
1447 macro lacks its second, section number argument.
1448 The first argument, i.e. the name, is printed, but without subsequent
1450 .It Sy "missing -std argument, adding it"
1456 macro lacks the required
1463 even when it is not specified, but other implementations may not.
1464 .It Sy "missing option string, using \(dq\(dq"
1468 macro is invoked without any argument.
1469 An empty pair of square brackets is shown.
1470 .It Sy "missing resource identifier, using \(dq\(dq"
1476 macro is invoked without any argument.
1477 An empty pair of angle brackets is shown.
1478 .It Sy "missing eqn box, using \(dq\(dq"
1480 A diacritic mark or a binary operator is found,
1481 but there is nothing to the left of it.
1482 An empty box is inserted.
1484 .Ss "Warnings related to bad macro arguments"
1486 .It Sy "duplicate argument"
1492 macro has more than one
1499 All but the last instances of these arguments are ignored.
1500 .It Sy "skipping duplicate argument"
1504 macro has more than one
1509 All but the first of these arguments are ignored.
1510 .It Sy "skipping duplicate display type"
1514 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1515 .It Sy "skipping duplicate list type"
1519 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1520 .It Sy "skipping -width argument"
1534 .It Sy "wrong number of cells"
1537 list, the number of tabs or
1539 macros is less than the number expected from the list header line
1540 or exceeds the expected number by more than one.
1541 Missing cells remain empty, and all cells exceeding the number of
1542 columns are joined into one single cell.
1543 .It Sy "unknown AT&T UNIX version"
1547 macro has an invalid argument.
1548 It is used verbatim, with
1551 .It Sy "comma in function argument"
1557 macro contains a comma; it should probably be split into two arguments.
1558 .It Sy "parenthesis in function name"
1560 The first argument of an
1564 macro contains an opening or closing parenthesis; that's probably wrong,
1565 parentheses are added automatically.
1566 .It Sy "unknown library name"
1570 macro has an unknown name argument and will be rendered as
1571 .Qq library Dq Ar name .
1572 .It Sy "invalid content in Rs block"
1576 block contains plain text or non-% macros.
1577 The bogus content is left in the syntax tree.
1578 Formatting may be poor.
1579 .It Sy "invalid Boolean argument"
1583 macro has an argument other than
1587 The invalid argument is moved out of the macro, which leaves the macro
1588 empty, causing it to toggle the spacing mode.
1589 .It Sy "unknown font, skipping request"
1597 layout modifier has an unknown
1600 .It Sy "odd number of characters in request"
1604 request contains an odd number of characters.
1605 The last character is mapped to the blank character.
1607 .Ss "Warnings related to plain text"
1609 .It Sy "blank line in fill mode, using .sp"
1611 The meaning of blank input lines is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1612 In fill mode, line breaks of text input lines are not supposed to be
1614 However, for compatibility with groff, blank lines in fill mode
1618 .It Sy "tab in filled text"
1620 The meaning of tab characters is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1621 In fill mode, whitespace is not supposed to be significant
1622 on text input lines.
1623 As an implementation dependent choice, tab characters on text lines
1624 are passed through to the formatters in any case.
1625 Given that the text before the tab character will be filled,
1626 it is hard to predict which tab stop position the tab will advance to.
1627 .It Sy "new sentence, new line"
1629 A new sentence starts in the middle of a text line.
1630 Start it on a new input line to help formatters produce correct spacing.
1631 .It Sy "invalid escape sequence"
1633 An escape sequence has an invalid opening argument delimiter, lacks the
1634 closing argument delimiter, or the argument has too few characters.
1635 If the argument is incomplete,
1639 expand to an empty string,
1645 to the length of the incomplete argument.
1646 All other invalid escape sequences are ignored.
1647 .It Sy "undefined string, using \(dq\(dq"
1649 If a string is used without being defined before,
1650 its value is implicitly set to the empty string.
1651 However, defining strings explicitly before use
1652 keeps the code more readable.
1654 .Ss "Warnings related to tables"
1656 .It Sy "tbl line starts with span"
1658 The first cell in a table layout line is a horizontal span
1660 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1661 .It Sy "tbl column starts with span"
1663 The first line of a table layout specification
1664 requests a vertical span
1666 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1667 .It Sy "skipping vertical bar in tbl layout"
1669 A table layout specification contains more than two consecutive vertical bars.
1670 A double bar is printed, all additional bars are discarded.
1672 .Ss "Errors related to tables"
1674 .It Sy "non-alphabetic character in tbl options"
1676 The table options line contains a character other than a letter,
1677 blank, or comma where the beginning of an option name is expected.
1678 The character is ignored.
1679 .It Sy "skipping unknown tbl option"
1681 The table options line contains a string of letters that does not
1682 match any known option name.
1683 The word is ignored.
1684 .It Sy "missing tbl option argument"
1686 A table option that requires an argument is not followed by an
1687 opening parenthesis, or the opening parenthesis is immediately
1688 followed by a closing parenthesis.
1689 The option is ignored.
1690 .It Sy "wrong tbl option argument size"
1692 A table option argument contains an invalid number of characters.
1693 Both the option and the argument are ignored.
1694 .It Sy "empty tbl layout"
1696 A table layout specification is completely empty,
1697 specifying zero lines and zero columns.
1698 As a fallback, a single left-justified column is used.
1699 .It Sy "invalid character in tbl layout"
1701 A table layout specification contains a character that can neither
1702 be interpreted as a layout key character nor as a layout modifier,
1703 or a modifier precedes the first key.
1704 The invalid character is discarded.
1705 .It Sy "unmatched parenthesis in tbl layout"
1707 A table layout specification contains an opening parenthesis,
1708 but no matching closing parenthesis.
1709 The rest of the input line, starting from the parenthesis, has no effect.
1710 .It Sy "tbl without any data cells"
1712 A table does not contain any data cells.
1713 It will probably produce no output.
1714 .It Sy "ignoring data in spanned tbl cell"
1716 A table cell is marked as a horizontal span
1720 in the table layout, but it contains data.
1721 The data is ignored.
1722 .It Sy "ignoring extra tbl data cells"
1724 A data line contains more cells than the corresponding layout line.
1725 The data in the extra cells is ignored.
1726 .It Sy "data block open at end of tbl"
1728 A data block is opened with
1730 but never closed with a matching
1732 The remaining data lines of the table are all put into one cell,
1733 and any remaining cells stay empty.
1735 .Ss "Errors related to roff, mdoc, and man code"
1737 .It Sy "duplicate prologue macro"
1739 One of the prologue macros occurs more than once.
1740 The last instance overrides all previous ones.
1741 .It Sy "skipping late title macro"
1745 macro appears after the first non-prologue macro.
1746 Traditional formatters cannot handle this because
1747 they write the page header before parsing the document body.
1748 Even though this technical restriction does not apply to
1750 traditional semantics is preserved.
1751 The late macro is discarded including its arguments.
1752 .It Sy "input stack limit exceeded, infinite loop?"
1754 Explicit recursion limits are implemented for the following features,
1755 in order to prevent infinite loops:
1758 expansion of nested escape sequences
1759 including expansion of strings and number registers,
1761 expansion of nested user-defined macros,
1767 When a limit is hit, the output is incorrect, typically losing
1768 some content, but the parser can continue.
1769 .It Sy "skipping bad character"
1770 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1771 The input file contains a byte that is not a printable
1774 The message mentions the character number.
1775 The offending byte is replaced with a question mark
1777 Consider editing the input file to replace the byte with an ASCII
1778 transliteration of the intended character.
1779 .It Sy "skipping unknown macro"
1780 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1781 The first identifier on a request or macro line is neither recognized as a
1783 request, nor as a user-defined macro, nor, respectively, as an
1788 It may be mistyped or unsupported.
1789 The request or macro is discarded including its arguments.
1790 .It Sy "skipping insecure request"
1792 An input file attempted to run a shell command
1793 or to read or write an external file.
1794 Such attempts are denied for security reasons.
1795 .It Sy "skipping item outside list"
1799 macro occurs outside any
1804 delimiter occurs outside any pile.
1805 It is discarded including its arguments.
1806 .It Sy "skipping column outside column list"
1810 macro occurs outside any
1813 It is discarded including its arguments.
1814 .It Sy "skipping end of block that is not open"
1815 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1816 Various syntax elements can only be used to explicitly close blocks
1817 that have previously been opened.
1820 block closing macro, a
1827 right delimiter or closing brace, or the end of an equation, table, or
1829 conditional request is encountered but no matching block is open.
1830 The offending request or macro is discarded.
1831 .It Sy "fewer RS blocks open, skipping"
1835 macro is invoked with an argument, but less than the specified number of
1841 .It Sy "inserting missing end of block"
1845 macros as well as tables require explicit closing by dedicated macros.
1846 A block that doesn't support bad nesting
1847 ends before all of its children are properly closed.
1848 The open child nodes are closed implicitly.
1849 .It Sy "appending missing end of block"
1850 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1851 At the end of the document, an explicit
1859 block, an equation, table, or
1861 conditional or ignore block is still open.
1862 The open block is closed implicitly.
1863 .It Sy "escaped character not allowed in a name"
1865 Macro, string and register identifiers consist of printable,
1866 non-whitespace ASCII characters.
1867 Escape sequences and characters and strings expressed in terms of them
1868 cannot form part of a name.
1869 The first argument of an
1877 request, or any argument of an
1879 request, or the name of a request or user defined macro being called,
1880 is terminated by an escape sequence.
1886 the request has no effect at all.
1893 what was parsed up to this point is used as the arguments to the request,
1894 and the rest of the input line is discarded including the escape sequence.
1895 When parsing for a request or a user-defined macro name to be called,
1896 only the escape sequence is discarded.
1897 The characters preceding it are used as the request or macro name,
1898 the characters following it are used as the arguments to the request or macro.
1899 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: Bd -file"
1901 For security reasons, the
1903 macro does not support the
1906 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1907 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1908 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1909 The argument is ignored including the file name following it.
1910 .It Sy "skipping display without arguments"
1914 block macro does not have any arguments.
1915 The block is discarded, and the block content is displayed in
1916 whatever mode was active before the block.
1917 .It Sy "missing list type, using -item"
1921 macro fails to specify the list type.
1922 .It Sy "argument is not numeric, using 1"
1926 request is not a number.
1927 .It Sy "missing manual name, using \(dq\(dq"
1931 or any call in the NAME section, lacks the required argument.
1932 .It Sy "uname(3) system call failed, using UNKNOWN"
1936 macro is called without arguments, and the
1941 can be compiled with
1943 .Fl D Cm OSNAME=\(dq\e\(dq Ar string Cm \e\(dq\(dq .
1945 .It Sy "unknown standard specifier"
1949 macro has an unknown argument and is discarded.
1950 .It Sy "skipping request without numeric argument"
1959 statement has a non-numeric or negative argument or no argument at all.
1960 The invalid request or statement is ignored.
1961 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: .so with absolute path or \(dq..\(dq"
1963 For security reasons,
1967 file inclusion requests only with relative paths
1968 and only without ascending to any parent directory.
1969 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1970 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1971 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1973 only shows the path as it appears behind
1975 .It Sy ".so request failed"
1979 request requires reading an external file, but the file could not be
1982 only shows the path as it appears behind
1984 .It Sy "skipping all arguments"
1985 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , roff
2001 macro in a list that don't support item heads, a
2020 block closing request is invoked with at least one argument.
2021 All arguments are ignored.
2022 .It Sy "skipping excess arguments"
2023 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
2024 A macro or request is invoked with too many arguments:
2025 .Bl -dash -offset 2n -width 2n -compact
2035 with more than one argument
2038 with another argument after
2044 with more than one argument or with a non-integer argument
2049 family with more than two arguments
2052 with more than three arguments
2055 with more than five arguments
2061 with invalid arguments
2063 The excess arguments are ignored.
2065 .Ss Unsupported features
2067 .It Sy "input too large"
2071 cannot handle input files larger than its arbitrary size limit
2072 of 2^31 bytes (2 Gigabytes).
2073 Since useful manuals are always small, this is not a problem in practice.
2074 Parsing is aborted as soon as the condition is detected.
2075 .It Sy "unsupported control character"
2077 An ASCII control character supported by other
2079 implementations but not by
2081 was found in an input file.
2082 It is replaced by a question mark.
2083 .It Sy "unsupported roff request"
2085 An input file contains a
2087 request supported by GNU troff or Heirloom troff but not by
2089 and it is likely that this will cause information loss
2090 or considerable misformatting.
2091 .It Sy "eqn delim option in tbl"
2093 The options line of a table defines equation delimiters.
2094 Any equation source code contained in the table will be printed unformatted.
2095 .It Sy "unsupported table layout modifier"
2097 A table layout specification contains an
2100 The modifier is discarded.
2101 .It Sy "ignoring macro in table"
2102 .Pq tbl , mdoc , man
2103 A table contains an invocation of an
2107 macro or of an undefined macro.
2108 The macro is ignored, and its arguments are handled
2109 as if they were a text line.
2123 utility first appeared in
2137 utility was written by
2138 .An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv
2139 and is maintained by
2140 .An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org .
git.ckatri.com / mandoc.git / blob