TODO

   1 ************************************************************************
   2 * Official mandoc TODO.
   3 * $Id: TODO,v 1.91 2011/02/27 14:17:28 schwarze Exp $
   4 ************************************************************************
   5
   6 ************************************************************************
   7 * parser bugs
   8 ************************************************************************
   9
  10 - .TP before .SH is still FATAL in man(7)
  11   reported by brad@  Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:54:54 -0500
  12
  13 - The mdoc(7) parser should handle `\.' as punctuation:
  14     .Ql .if ${VAR} op something \.
  15   should produce
  16     `.if ${VAR} op something'.
  17   not
  18     `.if ${VAR} op something .'
  19   as seen in make(1).
  20   To escape the dot, one would use `\&.'.
  21
  22 - the roff parser doesn't tolerate additional characters between
  23   a macro and the \} terminating a conditional block, e.g.
  24   .if n \{
  25   .br \}
  26   reported by ulrich spoerlein  Tue, 19 Oct 2010 20:39:50 +0200
  27
  28 ************************************************************************
  29 * formatter bugs
  30 ************************************************************************
  31
  32 ************************************************************************
  33 * missing features
  34 ************************************************************************
  35
  36 --- missing roff features ----------------------------------------------
  37
  38 - .ad (adjust margins)
  39   .ad l -- adjust left margin only (flush left)
  40   .ad r -- adjust right margin only (flush right)
  41   .ad c -- center text on line
  42   .ad b -- adjust both margins (alias: .ad n)
  43   .na   -- temporarily disable adjustment without changing the mode
  44   .ad   -- re-enable adjustment without changing the mode
  45   Adjustment mode is ignored while in no-fill mode (.nf).
  46
  47 - .it (line traps) occur in mysql(1), yasm_arch(7)
  48   generated by DocBook XSL Stylesheets v1.71.1 <http://docbook.sf.net/>
  49   reported by brad@  Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:48:18 -0500
  50
  51 - .ns (no-space mode) occurs in xine-config(1)
  52   reported by brad@  Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:45:23 -0500
  53
  54 - xloadimage(1) wants .ti (temporary indent), rep by naddy@
  55
  56 - .ta (tab settings) occurs in ircbug(1) and probably gnats(1)
  57   reported by brad@  Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:50:51 -0500
  58
  59 - pod2man expects `tr' to be implemented for \*(-- to work
  60
  61 - \c (interrupted text) occurs in chat(8)
  62
  63 --- missing mdoc features ----------------------------------------------
  64
  65 - fix bad block nesting involving multiple identical explicit blocks
  66   see the OpenBSD mdoc_macro.c 1.47 commit message
  67
  68 - .Bl -column .Xo support is missing
  69   ultimate goal:
  70   restore .Xr and .Dv to
  71   lib/libc/compat-43/sigvec.3
  72   lib/libc/gen/signal.3
  73   lib/libc/sys/sigaction.2
  74
  75 - edge case: decide how to deal with blk_full bad nesting, e.g.
  76   .Sh .Nm .Bk .Nm .Ek .Sh found by jmc@ in ssh-keygen(1)
  77   from jmc@  Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:10:32 +0100
  78
  79 - \\ is now implemented correctly
  80   * when defining strings and macros using .ds and .de
  81   * when parsing roff(7) and man(7) macro arguments
  82   It does not yet work in mdoc(7) macro arguments
  83   because libmdoc does not yet use mandoc_getarg().
  84   Also check what happens in plain text, it must be identical to \e.
  85
  86 - .Bd -filled should not be the same as .Bd -ragged, but align both
  87   the left and right margin.  In groff, it is implemented in terms
  88   of .ad b, which we don't have either.  Found in cksum(1).
  89
  90 - implement blank `Bl -column', such as
  91   .Bl -column
  92   .It foo Ta bar
  93   .El
  94
  95 - explicitly disallow nested `Bl -column', which would clobber internal
  96   flags defined for struct mdoc_macro
  97
  98 - inside `.Bl -column' phrases, punctuation is handled like normal
  99   text, e.g. `.Bl -column .It Fl x . Ta ...' should give "-x -."
 100
 101 - inside `.Bl -column' phrases, TERMP_IGNDELIM handling by `Pf'
 102   is not safe, e.g. `.Bl -column .It Pf a b .' gives "ab."
 103   but should give "ab ."
 104
 105 - set a meaningful default if no `Bl' list type is assigned
 106
 107 - have a blank `It' head for `Bl -tag' not puke
 108
 109 - prohibit `Nm' from having non-text HEAD children
 110   (e.g., NetBSD mDNSShared/dns-sd.1)
 111   (mdoc_html.c and mdoc_term.c `Nm' handlers can be slightly simplified)
 112
 113 --- missing man features -----------------------------------------------
 114
 115 - bashbug(1) complains "line scope broken" after
 116   .SM
 117   .B something
 118   should either just work or be a warning
 119   reported by naddy@
 120
 121 - groff an-ext.tmac macros (.UR, .UE) occur in xine(5)
 122   reported by brad@  Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:45:23 -0500
 123
 124 --- missing tbl features -----------------------------------------------
 125
 126 - implement basic non-parametric .de to support e.g. sox(1)
 127   reported by naddy@ Sat, 16 Oct 2010 23:51:57 +0200
 128   *** sox(1) still doesn't work, tbl(1) errors need investigation
 129
 130 --- missing misc features ----------------------------------------------
 131
 132 - clean up escape sequence handling, creating three classes:
 133   (1) fully implemented, or parsed and ignored without loss of content
 134   (2) unimplemented, potentially causing loss of content
 135       or serious mangling of formatting (e.g. \n) -> ERROR
 136       see textproc/mgdiff(1) for nice examples
 137   (3) undefined, just output the character -> perhaps WARNING
 138
 139 - The \t escape sequence is the same as a literal tab, see for example
 140   the ASCII table in hexdump(1) where
 141     .Bl -column \&000_nu \&001_so \&002_st \&003_et \&004_eo
 142     .It \&000\ nul\t001\ soh\t002\ stx\t003\ etx\t004\ eot\t005\ enq
 143   produces
 144     000 nul  001 soh  002 stx  003 etx  004 eot  005 enq
 145   and the example in oldrdist(1)
 146
 147 - look at pages generated from reStructeredText, e.g. devel/mercurial hg(1)
 148   These are a weird mixture of man(7) and custom autogenerated low-level
 149   roff stuff.  Figure out to what extent we can cope.
 150   For details, see http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html
 151   noted by stsp@  Sat, 24 Apr 2010 09:17:55 +0200
 152   reminded by nicm@  Mon, 3 May 2010 09:52:41 +0100
 153
 154 - check compatibility with Plan9:
 155   http://swtch.com/usr/local/plan9/tmac/tmac.an
 156   http://swtch.com/plan9port/man/man7/man.html
 157   "Anthony J. Bentley" <anthonyjbentley@gmail.com> 28 Dec 2010 21:58:40 -0700
 158
 159 ************************************************************************
 160 * formatting issues: ugly output
 161 ************************************************************************
 162
 163 - a column list with blank `Ta' cells triggers a spurrious
 164   start-with-whitespace printing of a newline
 165
 166 - double quotes inside double quotes are escaped by doubling them
 167   implement this in mdoc(7), too
 168   so far, we only have it in roff(7) and man(7)
 169   reminded by millert@  Thu, 09 Dec 2010 17:29:52 -0500
 170
 171 - perl(1) SYNOPSIS looks bad; reported by deraadt@
 172   1) man(7) seems to need SYNOPSIS .Nm blocks, too
 173
 174 - In .Bl -column,
 175   .It Em Authentication<tab>Key Length
 176   ought to render "Key Length" with emphasis, too,
 177   see OpenBSD iked.conf(5).
 178
 179 - empty phrases in .Bl column produce too few blanks
 180   try e.g. .Bl -column It Ta Ta
 181   reported by millert Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:13:46 -0400
 182
 183 - .%T can have trailing punctuation.  Currently, it puts the trailing
 184   punctuation into a trailing MDOC_TEXT element inside its own scope.
 185   That element should rather be outside its scope, such that the
 186   punctuation does not get underlines.  This is not trivial to
 187   implement because .%T then needs some features of in_line_eoln() -
 188   slurp all arguments into one single text element - and one feature
 189   of in_line() - put trailing punctuation out of scope.
 190   Found in mount_nfs(8) and exports(5), search for "Appendix".
 191
 192 - in enclosures, mandoc sometimes fancies a bogus end of sentence
 193   reminded by jmc@  Thu, 23 Sep 2010 18:13:39 +0059
 194
 195 ************************************************************************
 196 * formatting issues: gratuitious differences
 197 ************************************************************************
 198
 199 - .Rv (and probably .Ex) print different text if an `Nm' has been named
 200   or not (run a manual without `Nm blah' to see this).  I'm not sure
 201   that this exists in the wild, but it's still an error.
 202
 203 - In .Bl -bullet, the groff bullet is "+\b+\bo\bo", the mandoc bullet
 204   is just "o\bo".
 205   see for example OpenBSD ksh(1)
 206
 207 - The characters "|" and "\*(Ba" should never be bold,
 208   not even in the middle of a word, e.g. ".Cm b\*(Bac" in
 209   "mknod [-m mode] name b|c major minor"
 210   in OpenBSD ksh(1)
 211
 212 - A bogus .Pp between two .It must not produce a double blank line,
 213   see between -R and -r in OpenBSD rm(1), before "update" in mount(8),
 214   or in DIAGNOSTICS in init(8), or before "is always true" in ksh(1).
 215   The same happens with .Pp just before .El, see bgpd.conf(5).
 216   Also have `It' complain if `Pp' is invoked at certain times (not
 217   -compact?).
 218
 219 - If the *first* line after .It is .Pp, break the line right after
 220   the tag, do not pad with space characters before breaking.
 221   See the description of the a, c, and i commands in sed(1).
 222
 223 - If the first line after .It is .D1, do not assert a blank line
 224   in between, see for example tmux(1).
 225   reported by nicm@  13 Jan 2011 00:18:57 +0000
 226
 227 - .Nx 1.0a
 228   should be "NetBSD 1.0A", not "NetBSD 1.0a",
 229   see OpenBSD ccdconfig(8).
 230
 231 - In .Bl -tag, if a tag exceeds the right margin and must be continued
 232   on the next line, it must be indented by -width, not width+1;
 233   see "rule block|pass" in OpenBSD ifconfig(8).
 234
 235 - When the -width string contains macros, the macros must be rendered
 236   before measuring the width, for example
 237     .Bl -tag -width ".Dv message"
 238   in magic(5), located in src/usr.bin/file, is the same
 239   as -width 7n, not -width 11n.
 240
 241 - The \& zero-width character counts as output.
 242   That is, when it is alone on a line between two .Pp,
 243   we want three blank lines, not two as in mandoc.
 244
 245 - When .Fn arguments exceed one output line, all but the first
 246   should be indented, see e.g. rpc(3);
 247   reported by jmc@ on discuss@  Fri, 29 Oct 2010 13:48:33 +0100
 248
 249 - .Ns should work when called at the end of an input line, see
 250   the following code in vi(1):
 251     .It Xo
 252     .Op Ar line
 253     .Cm a Ns Op Cm ppend Ns
 254     .Op Cm !\&
 255     .Xc
 256     The input text is appended after the specified line.
 257
 258 - Header lines of excessive length:
 259   Port OpenBSD man_term.c rev. 1.25 to mdoc_term.c
 260   and document it in mdoc(7) and man(7) COMPATIBILITY
 261   found while talking to Chris Bennett
 262
 263 - In man(7), the sequence
 264     .HP
 265     one line of regular text
 266     .SH
 267   should not produce two blank lines before the .SH,
 268   see for example named-checkconf(8).
 269
 270 - In man(7), the sequence
 271     regular text
 272     .RS
 273     .IP
 274   should have a blank line between the text and the beginning of the
 275   indented paragraph, see for example sudo(1).
 276
 277 - At least sometimes, .sp is ignored right after .SH; see named.conf(5).
 278
 279 - trailing whitespace must be ignored even when followed by a font escape,
 280   see for example
 281     makes
 282     \fBdig \fR
 283     operate in batch mode
 284   in dig(1).
 285
 286 ************************************************************************
 287 * error reporting issues
 288 ************************************************************************
 289
 290 ************************************************************************
 291 * performance issues
 292 ************************************************************************
 293
 294 Several areas can be cleaned up to make mandoc even faster.  These are
 295
 296 - improve hashing mechanism for macros (quite important: performance)
 297
 298 - improve hashing mechanism for characters (not as important)
 299
 300 - the PDF file is HUGE: this can be reduced by using relative offsets
 301
 302 ************************************************************************
 303 * structural issues
 304 ************************************************************************
 305
 306 - Find better ways to prevent endless loops
 307   in roff(7) macro and string expansion.
 308
 309 - Clean up date handling.
 310   Store dates as strings, not time numbers.
 311   When the format is not recognized, just use the string from the input.
 312   When the format is recognized, normalize the string to whatever
 313   format is standard at the respective place.
 314   Decide which formats should be recognized where.
 315   Update both mdoc(7) and man(7) documentation.
 316   Triggered by  Tim van der Molen  Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:30:45 +0100