1 .\" $Id: mandoc.1,v 1.171 2017/01/21 02:32:39 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: January 21 2017 $
23 .Nd format and display UNIX manuals
27 .Op Fl I Cm os Ns = Ns Ar name
39 manual pages for display.
47 text from stdin, implying
53 The options are as follows:
56 If the standard output is a terminal device and
60 to paginate the output, just like
64 Copy the formatted manual pages to the standard output without using
68 It can be specified to override
73 This overrides any earlier
79 Display only the SYNOPSIS lines.
82 .It Fl I Cm os Ns = Ns Ar name
83 Override the default operating system
93 Specify the input encoding.
101 If not specified, autodetection uses the first match:
102 .Bl -tag -width iso-8859-1
104 if the first three bytes of the input file
105 are the UTF-8 byte order mark (BOM, 0xefbbbf)
107 if the first or second line of the input file matches the
111 .D1 .\e" -*- Oo ...; Oc coding: Ar encoding ; No -*-
113 if the first non-ASCII byte in the file introduces a valid UTF-8 sequence
120 This overrides any earlier
128 Also reverts any earlier
133 .It Fl m Ns Ar format
137 for available formats.
141 Comma-separated output options.
146 for available formats.
150 Specify the minimum message
152 to be reported on the standard error output and to affect the exit status.
176 to exit after parsing a file that causes warnings or errors of at least
178 No formatted output will be produced from that file.
183 are requested, they can be joined with a comma, for example
184 .Fl W Cm error , Ns Cm stop .
186 Read input from zero or more files.
187 If unspecified, reads from stdin.
188 If multiple files are specified,
190 will halt with the first failed parse.
199 also supports the options
222 should only be used for legacy manuals.
226 which is also the default, determines encoding on-the-fly: if the first
233 parser is used; otherwise, the
238 files are specified with
240 each has its file-type determined this way.
241 If multiple files are
246 is specified, then this format is used exclusively.
250 utility accepts the following
252 arguments, which correspond to output modes:
253 .Bl -tag -width "-T locale"
255 Produce 7-bit ASCII output.
259 Produce HTML5, CSS1, and MathML output.
263 Parse only: produce no output.
267 Encode output using the current locale.
282 Produce PostScript output.
284 .Sx PostScript Output .
286 Produce an indented parse tree.
288 .Sx Syntax tree output .
290 Encode output in the UTF\-8 multi-byte format.
294 This is a synonym for
298 If multiple input files are specified, these will be processed by the
299 corresponding filter in-order.
303 is rendered in standard 7-bit ASCII documented in
306 Font styles are applied by using back-spaced encoding such that an
310 .Sq _ Ns \e[bs] Ns c ,
313 is the back-space character number 8.
314 Emboldened characters are rendered as
315 .Sq c Ns \e[bs] Ns c .
317 The special characters documented in
319 are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent.
321 Output width is limited to 78 visible columns unless literal input lines
326 arguments are accepted:
328 .It Cm indent Ns = Ns Ar indent
329 The left margin for normal text is set to
331 blank characters instead of the default of five for
335 Increasing this is not recommended; it may result in degraded formatting,
336 for example overfull lines or ugly line breaks.
337 .It Cm width Ns = Ns Ar width
338 The output width is set to
340 which will normalise to \(>=58.
345 conforms to HTML5 using optional self-closing tags.
346 Default styles use only CSS1.
347 Equations rendered from
353 file documents style-sheet classes available for customising output.
354 If a style-sheet is not specified with
357 defaults to simple output (via an embedded style-sheet)
358 readable in any graphical or text-based web
361 Special characters are rendered in decimal-encoded UTF\-8.
365 arguments are accepted:
368 Omit the <!DOCTYPE> declaration and the <html>, <head>, and <body>
369 elements and only emit the subtree below the <body> element.
372 argument will be ignored.
373 This is useful when embedding manual content within existing documents.
374 .It Cm includes Ns = Ns Ar fmt
379 is used as a template for linked header files (usually via the
384 are replaced with the include filename.
385 The default is not to present a
387 .It Cm man Ns = Ns Ar fmt
391 .Ar ../html%S/%N.%S.html ,
392 is used as a template for linked manuals (usually via the
399 are replaced with the linked manual's name and section, respectively.
400 If no section is included, section 1 is assumed.
401 The default is not to
403 .It Cm style Ns = Ns Ar style.css
406 is used for an external style-sheet.
407 This must be a valid absolute or
411 Locale-depending output encoding is triggered with
415 This option is not available on all systems: systems without locale
416 support, or those whose internal representation is not natively UCS-4,
421 for font style specification and available command-line arguments.
423 Translate input format into
426 This is useful for distributing manual sources to legacy systems
433 is passed as input, it is translated into
435 If the input format is
437 the input is copied to the output, expanding any
441 The parser is also run, and as usual, the
445 are displayed before copying the input to the output.
447 PDF-1.1 output may be generated by
450 .Sx PostScript Output
453 arguments and defaults.
454 .Ss PostScript Output
457 Level-2 pages may be generated by
459 Output pages default to letter sized and are rendered in the Times font
461 Margins are calculated as 1/9 the page length and width.
464 Special characters are rendered as in
469 arguments are accepted:
471 .It Cm paper Ns = Ns Ar name
481 You may also manually specify dimensions as
483 width by height in millimetres.
484 If an unknown value is encountered,
491 to force a UTF\-8 locale.
494 for details and options.
495 .Ss Syntax tree output
498 to show a human readable representation of the syntax tree.
499 It is useful for debugging the source code of manual pages.
500 The exact format is subject to change, so don't write parsers for it.
502 The first paragraph shows meta data found in the
507 line, or the fallbacks used.
509 In the tree dump, each output line shows one syntax tree node.
510 Child nodes are indented with respect to their parent node.
515 For macro nodes, the macro name; for text and
518 There is a special format for
522 Node type (text, elem, block, head, body, body-end, tail, tbl, eqn).
527 An opening parenthesis if the node is an opening delimiter.
529 An asterisk if the node starts a new input line.
531 The input line number (starting at one).
535 The input column number (starting at one).
537 A closing parenthesis if the node is a closing delimiter.
539 A full stop if the node ends a sentence.
541 NOSRC if the node is not in the input file,
542 but automatically generated from macros.
544 NOPRT if the node is not supposed to generate output
545 for any output format.
549 .Bl -tag -width MANPAGER
551 Any non-empty value of the environment variable
553 will be used instead of the standard pagination program,
556 Specifies the pagination program to use when
559 If neither PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined,
567 utility exits with one of the following values, controlled by the message
573 .Bl -tag -width Ds -compact
575 No warnings or errors occurred, or those that did were ignored because
576 they were lower than the requested
579 At least one warning occurred, but no error, and
583 At least one parsing error occurred,
584 but no unsupported feature was encountered, and
590 At least one unsupported feature was encountered, and
597 Invalid command line arguments were specified.
598 No input files have been read.
600 An operating system error occurred, for example exhaustion
601 of memory, file descriptors, or process table entries.
604 to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file.
612 To page manuals to the terminal:
614 .Dl $ mandoc \-W all,stop mandoc.1 2\*(Gt&1 | less
615 .Dl $ mandoc mandoc.1 mdoc.3 mdoc.7 | less
617 To produce HTML manuals with
621 .Dl $ mandoc \-T html -O style=mandoc.css mdoc.7 \*(Gt mdoc.7.html
623 To check over a large set of manuals:
625 .Dl $ mandoc \-T lint \(gafind /usr/src -name \e*\e.[1-9]\(ga
627 To produce a series of PostScript manuals for A4 paper:
629 .Dl $ mandoc \-T ps \-O paper=a4 mdoc.7 man.7 \*(Gt manuals.ps
635 format, for use on systems lacking an
639 .Dl $ mandoc \-T man foo.mdoc \*(Gt foo.man
641 Messages displayed by
645 .D1 Nm Ns : Ar file : Ns Ar line : Ns Ar column : level : message : macro args
647 Line and column numbers start at 1.
648 Both are omitted for messages referring to an input file as a whole.
649 Macro names and arguments are omitted where meaningless.
650 Fatal messages about invalid command line arguments
651 or operating system errors, for example when memory is exhausted,
658 Message levels have the following meanings:
659 .Bl -tag -width "warning"
661 An input file uses unsupported low-level
664 The output may be incomplete and/or misformatted,
665 so using GNU troff instead of
667 to process the file may be preferable.
669 An input file contains invalid syntax that cannot be safely interpreted.
670 By discarding part of the input or inserting missing tokens,
671 the parser is able to continue, and the error does not prevent
672 generation of formatted output, but typically, preparing that
673 output involves information loss, broken document structure
674 or unintended formatting, no matter whether
676 or GNU troff is used.
677 In many cases, the output of
679 and GNU troff is identical, but in some,
681 is more resilient than GNU troff with respect to malformed input.
683 Non-existent or unreadable input files are also reported on the
686 In that case, the parser cannot even be started and no output
687 is produced from those input files.
689 An input file uses obsolete, discouraged or non-portable syntax.
690 All the same, the meaning of the input is unambiguous and a correct
691 rendering can be produced.
692 Documents causing warnings may render poorly when using other
693 formatting tools instead of
702 levels except those about non-existent or unreadable input files
703 are hidden unless their level, or a lower level, is requested using a
708 .Ss Warnings related to the document prologue
710 .It Sy "missing manual title, using UNTITLED"
714 macro has no arguments, or there is no
716 macro before the first non-prologue macro.
717 .It Sy "missing manual title, using \(dq\(dq"
721 macro, or it has no arguments.
722 .It Sy "lower case character in document title"
724 The title is still used as given in the
729 .It Sy "missing manual section, using \(dq\(dq"
735 macro lacks the mandatory section argument.
736 .It Sy "unknown manual section"
738 The section number in a
740 line is invalid, but still used.
741 .It Sy "missing date, using today's date"
743 The document was parsed as
749 macro has no arguments or only empty arguments;
750 or the document was parsed as
756 macro has less than three arguments or its third argument is empty.
757 .It Sy "cannot parse date, using it verbatim"
763 macro does not follow the conventional format.
764 .It Sy "missing Os macro, using \(dq\(dq"
766 The default or current system is not shown in this case.
767 .It Sy "duplicate prologue macro"
769 One of the prologue macros occurs more than once.
770 The last instance overrides all previous ones.
771 .It Sy "late prologue macro"
777 macro occurs after some non-prologue macro, but still takes effect.
778 .It Sy "skipping late title macro"
782 macro appears after the first non-prologue macro.
783 Traditional formatters cannot handle this because
784 they write the page header before parsing the document body.
785 Even though this technical restriction does not apply to
787 traditional semantics is preserved.
788 The late macro is discarded including its arguments.
789 .It Sy "prologue macros out of order"
791 The prologue macros are not given in the conventional order
795 All three macros are used even when given in another order.
797 .Ss Warnings regarding document structure
799 .It Sy ".so is fragile, better use ln(1)"
801 Including files only works when the parser program runs with the correct
802 current working directory.
803 .It Sy "no document body"
805 The document body contains neither text nor macros.
806 An empty document is shown, consisting only of a header and a footer line.
807 .It Sy "content before first section header"
809 Some macros or text precede the first
814 The offending macros and text are parsed and added to the top level
815 of the syntax tree, outside any section block.
816 .It Sy "first section is not NAME"
818 The argument of the first
826 .It Sy "NAME section without Nm before Nd"
828 The NAME section does not contain any
830 child macro before the first
833 .It Sy "NAME section without description"
835 The NAME section lacks the mandatory
838 .It Sy "description not at the end of NAME"
840 The NAME section does contain an
842 child macro, but other content follows it.
843 .It Sy "bad NAME section content"
845 The NAME section contains plain text or macros other than
849 .It Sy "missing comma before name"
851 The NAME section contains an
853 macro that is neither the first one nor preceded by a comma.
854 .It Sy "missing description line, using \(dq\(dq"
858 macro lacks the required argument.
859 The title line of the manual will end after the dash.
860 .It Sy "sections out of conventional order"
862 A standard section occurs after another section it usually precedes.
863 All section titles are used as given,
864 and the order of sections is not changed.
865 .It Sy "duplicate section title"
867 The same standard section title occurs more than once.
868 .It Sy "unexpected section"
870 A standard section header occurs in a section of the manual
871 where it normally isn't useful.
872 .It Sy "unusual Xr order"
874 In the SEE ALSO section, an
876 macro with a lower section number follows one with a higher number,
879 macros referring to the same section are out of alphabetical order.
880 .It Sy "unusual Xr punctuation"
882 In the SEE ALSO section, punctuation between two
884 macros differs from a single comma, or there is trailing punctuation
888 .It Sy "AUTHORS section without An macro"
890 An AUTHORS sections contains no
892 macros, or only empty ones.
893 Probably, there are author names lacking markup.
895 .Ss "Warnings related to macros and nesting"
897 .It Sy "obsolete macro"
901 manual for replacements.
902 .It Sy "macro neither callable nor escaped"
904 The name of a macro that is not callable appears on a macro line.
905 It is printed verbatim.
906 If the intention is to call it, move it to its own input line;
907 otherwise, escape it by prepending
909 .It Sy "skipping paragraph macro"
912 documents, this happens
915 at the beginning and end of sections and subsections
917 right before non-compact lists and displays
919 at the end of items in non-column, non-compact lists
921 and for multiple consecutive paragraph macros.
925 documents, it happens
937 macros having neither head nor body arguments
948 .It Sy "moving paragraph macro out of list"
952 list contains a trailing paragraph macro.
953 The paragraph macro is moved after the end of the list.
954 .It Sy "skipping no-space macro"
956 An input line begins with an
959 The macro is ignored.
960 .It Sy "blocks badly nested"
962 If two blocks intersect, one should completely contain the other.
963 Otherwise, rendered output is likely to look strange in any output
964 format, and rendering in SGML-based output formats is likely to be
965 outright wrong because such languages do not support badly nested
967 Typical examples of badly nested blocks are
968 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bo \&Ac \&Bc
970 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bq \&Ac .
978 .It Sy "nested displays are not portable"
985 display occurs nested inside another
990 but fails with most other implementations.
991 .It Sy "moving content out of list"
995 list block contains text or macros before the first
998 The offending children are moved before the beginning of the list.
999 .It Sy "fill mode already enabled, skipping"
1003 request occurs even though the document is still in fill mode,
1004 or already switched back to fill mode.
1006 .It Sy "fill mode already disabled, skipping"
1010 request occurs even though the document already switched to no-fill mode
1011 and did not switch back to fill mode yet.
1013 .It Sy "line scope broken"
1015 While parsing the next-line scope of the previous macro,
1016 another macro is found that prematurely terminates the previous one.
1017 The previous, interrupted macro is deleted from the parse tree.
1019 .Ss "Warnings related to missing arguments"
1021 .It Sy "skipping empty request"
1023 The macro name is missing from a macro definition request,
1026 control statement or operation keyword lacks its required argument.
1027 .It Sy "conditional request controls empty scope"
1029 A conditional request is only useful if any of the following
1030 follows it on the same logical input line:
1035 keyword to open a multi-line scope.
1037 A request or macro or some text, resulting in a single-line scope.
1039 The immediate end of the logical line without any intervening whitespace,
1040 resulting in next-line scope.
1042 Here, a conditional request is followed by trailing whitespace only,
1043 and there is no other content on its logical input line.
1044 Note that it doesn't matter whether the logical input line is split
1045 across multiple physical input lines using
1047 line continuation characters.
1048 This is one of the rare cases
1049 where trailing whitespace is syntactically significant.
1050 The conditional request controls a scope containing whitespace only,
1051 so it is unlikely to have a significant effect,
1052 except that it may control a following
1055 .It Sy "skipping empty macro"
1057 The indicated macro has no arguments and hence no effect.
1058 .It Sy "empty block"
1069 block contains nothing in its body and will produce no output.
1070 .It Sy "empty argument, using 0n"
1072 The required width is missing after
1079 .It Sy "missing display type, using -ragged"
1083 macro is invoked without the required display type.
1084 .It Sy "list type is not the first argument"
1088 macro, at least one other argument precedes the type argument.
1091 utility copes with any argument order, but some other
1093 implementations do not.
1094 .It Sy "missing -width in -tag list, using 8n"
1103 .It Sy "missing utility name, using \(dq\(dq"
1107 macro is called without an argument before
1109 has first been called with an argument.
1110 .It Sy "missing function name, using \(dq\(dq"
1114 macro is called without an argument.
1115 No function name is printed.
1116 .It Sy "empty head in list item"
1128 macro lacks the required argument.
1129 The item head is left empty.
1130 .It Sy "empty list item"
1142 An empty list item is shown.
1143 .It Sy "missing font type, using \efR"
1147 macro has no argument.
1148 It switches to the default font.
1149 .It Sy "unknown font type, using \efR"
1153 argument is invalid.
1154 The default font is used instead.
1155 .It Sy "nothing follows prefix"
1159 macro has no argument, or only one argument and no macro follows
1160 on the same input line.
1161 This defeats its purpose; in particular, spacing is not suppressed
1162 before the text or macros following on the next input line.
1163 .It Sy "empty reference block"
1167 macro is immediately followed by an
1169 macro on the next input line.
1170 Such an empty block does not produce any output.
1171 .It Sy "missing section argument"
1175 macro lacks its second, section number argument.
1176 The first argument, i.e. the name, is printed, but without subsequent
1178 .It Sy "missing -std argument, adding it"
1184 macro lacks the required
1191 even when it is not specified, but other implementations may not.
1192 .It Sy "missing option string, using \(dq\(dq"
1196 macro is invoked without any argument.
1197 An empty pair of square brackets is shown.
1198 .It Sy "missing resource identifier, using \(dq\(dq"
1202 macro is invoked without any argument.
1203 An empty pair of angle brackets is shown.
1204 .It Sy "missing eqn box, using \(dq\(dq"
1206 A diacritic mark or a binary operator is found,
1207 but there is nothing to the left of it.
1208 An empty box is inserted.
1210 .Ss "Warnings related to bad macro arguments"
1212 .It Sy "unterminated quoted argument"
1214 Macro arguments can be enclosed in double quote characters
1215 such that space characters and macro names contained in the quoted
1216 argument need not be escaped.
1217 The closing quote of the last argument of a macro can be omitted.
1218 However, omitting it is not recommended because it makes the code
1220 .It Sy "duplicate argument"
1226 macro has more than one
1233 All but the last instances of these arguments are ignored.
1234 .It Sy "skipping duplicate argument"
1238 macro has more than one
1243 All but the first of these arguments are ignored.
1244 .It Sy "skipping duplicate display type"
1248 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1249 .It Sy "skipping duplicate list type"
1253 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1254 .It Sy "skipping -width argument"
1268 .It Sy "wrong number of cells"
1271 list, the number of tabs or
1273 macros is less than the number expected from the list header line
1274 or exceeds the expected number by more than one.
1275 Missing cells remain empty, and all cells exceeding the number of
1276 columns are joined into one single cell.
1277 .It Sy "unknown AT&T UNIX version"
1281 macro has an invalid argument.
1282 It is used verbatim, with
1285 .It Sy "comma in function argument"
1291 macro contains a comma; it should probably be split into two arguments.
1292 .It Sy "parenthesis in function name"
1294 The first argument of an
1298 macro contains an opening or closing parenthesis; that's probably wrong,
1299 parentheses are added automatically.
1300 .It Sy "invalid content in Rs block"
1304 block contains plain text or non-% macros.
1305 The bogus content is left in the syntax tree.
1306 Formatting may be poor.
1307 .It Sy "invalid Boolean argument"
1311 macro has an argument other than
1315 The invalid argument is moved out of the macro, which leaves the macro
1316 empty, causing it to toggle the spacing mode.
1317 .It Sy "unknown font, skipping request"
1325 layout modifier has an unknown
1328 .It Sy "odd number of characters in request"
1332 request contains an odd number of characters.
1333 The last character is mapped to the blank character.
1335 .Ss "Warnings related to plain text"
1337 .It Sy "blank line in fill mode, using .sp"
1339 The meaning of blank input lines is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1340 In fill mode, line breaks of text input lines are not supposed to be
1342 However, for compatibility with groff, blank lines in fill mode
1346 .It Sy "tab in filled text"
1348 The meaning of tab characters is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1349 In fill mode, whitespace is not supposed to be significant
1350 on text input lines.
1351 As an implementation dependent choice, tab characters on text lines
1352 are passed through to the formatters in any case.
1353 Given that the text before the tab character will be filled,
1354 it is hard to predict which tab stop position the tab will advance to.
1355 .It Sy "whitespace at end of input line"
1356 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1357 Whitespace at the end of input lines is almost never semantically
1358 significant \(em but in the odd case where it might be, it is
1359 extremely confusing when reviewing and maintaining documents.
1360 .It Sy "bad comment style"
1362 Comment lines start with a dot, a backslash, and a double-quote character.
1365 utility treats the line as a comment line even without the backslash,
1366 but leaving out the backslash might not be portable.
1367 .It Sy "invalid escape sequence"
1369 An escape sequence has an invalid opening argument delimiter, lacks the
1370 closing argument delimiter, or the argument has too few characters.
1371 If the argument is incomplete,
1375 expand to an empty string,
1381 to the length of the incomplete argument.
1382 All other invalid escape sequences are ignored.
1383 .It Sy "undefined string, using \(dq\(dq"
1385 If a string is used without being defined before,
1386 its value is implicitly set to the empty string.
1387 However, defining strings explicitly before use
1388 keeps the code more readable.
1390 .Ss "Warnings related to tables"
1392 .It Sy "tbl line starts with span"
1394 The first cell in a table layout line is a horizontal span
1396 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1397 .It Sy "tbl column starts with span"
1399 The first line of a table layout specification
1400 requests a vertical span
1402 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1403 .It Sy "skipping vertical bar in tbl layout"
1405 A table layout specification contains more than two consecutive vertical bars.
1406 A double bar is printed, all additional bars are discarded.
1408 .Ss "Errors related to tables"
1410 .It Sy "non-alphabetic character in tbl options"
1412 The table options line contains a character other than a letter,
1413 blank, or comma where the beginning of an option name is expected.
1414 The character is ignored.
1415 .It Sy "skipping unknown tbl option"
1417 The table options line contains a string of letters that does not
1418 match any known option name.
1419 The word is ignored.
1420 .It Sy "missing tbl option argument"
1422 A table option that requires an argument is not followed by an
1423 opening parenthesis, or the opening parenthesis is immediately
1424 followed by a closing parenthesis.
1425 The option is ignored.
1426 .It Sy "wrong tbl option argument size"
1428 A table option argument contains an invalid number of characters.
1429 Both the option and the argument are ignored.
1430 .It Sy "empty tbl layout"
1432 A table layout specification is completely empty,
1433 specifying zero lines and zero columns.
1434 As a fallback, a single left-justified column is used.
1435 .It Sy "invalid character in tbl layout"
1437 A table layout specification contains a character that can neither
1438 be interpreted as a layout key character nor as a layout modifier,
1439 or a modifier precedes the first key.
1440 The invalid character is discarded.
1441 .It Sy "unmatched parenthesis in tbl layout"
1443 A table layout specification contains an opening parenthesis,
1444 but no matching closing parenthesis.
1445 The rest of the input line, starting from the parenthesis, has no effect.
1446 .It Sy "tbl without any data cells"
1448 A table does not contain any data cells.
1449 It will probably produce no output.
1450 .It Sy "ignoring data in spanned tbl cell"
1452 A table cell is marked as a horizontal span
1456 in the table layout, but it contains data.
1457 The data is ignored.
1458 .It Sy "ignoring extra tbl data cells"
1460 A data line contains more cells than the corresponding layout line.
1461 The data in the extra cells is ignored.
1462 .It Sy "data block open at end of tbl"
1464 A data block is opened with
1466 but never closed with a matching
1468 The remaining data lines of the table are all put into one cell,
1469 and any remaining cells stay empty.
1471 .Ss "Errors related to roff, mdoc, and man code"
1473 .It Sy "input stack limit exceeded, infinite loop?"
1475 Explicit recursion limits are implemented for the following features,
1476 in order to prevent infinite loops:
1479 expansion of nested escape sequences
1480 including expansion of strings and number registers,
1482 expansion of nested user-defined macros,
1488 When a limit is hit, the output is incorrect, typically losing
1489 some content, but the parser can continue.
1490 .It Sy "skipping bad character"
1491 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1492 The input file contains a byte that is not a printable
1495 The message mentions the character number.
1496 The offending byte is replaced with a question mark
1498 Consider editing the input file to replace the byte with an ASCII
1499 transliteration of the intended character.
1500 .It Sy "skipping unknown macro"
1501 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1502 The first identifier on a request or macro line is neither recognized as a
1504 request, nor as a user-defined macro, nor, respectively, as an
1509 It may be mistyped or unsupported.
1510 The request or macro is discarded including its arguments.
1511 .It Sy "skipping insecure request"
1513 An input file attempted to run a shell command
1514 or to read or write an external file.
1515 Such attempts are denied for security reasons.
1516 .It Sy "skipping item outside list"
1520 macro occurs outside any
1525 delimiter occurs outside any pile.
1526 It is discarded including its arguments.
1527 .It Sy "skipping column outside column list"
1531 macro occurs outside any
1534 It is discarded including its arguments.
1535 .It Sy "skipping end of block that is not open"
1536 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1537 Various syntax elements can only be used to explicitly close blocks
1538 that have previously been opened.
1541 block closing macro, a
1548 right delimiter or closing brace, or the end of an equation, table, or
1550 conditional request is encountered but no matching block is open.
1551 The offending request or macro is discarded.
1552 .It Sy "fewer RS blocks open, skipping"
1556 macro is invoked with an argument, but less than the specified number of
1562 .It Sy "inserting missing end of block"
1566 macros as well as tables require explicit closing by dedicated macros.
1567 A block that doesn't support bad nesting
1568 ends before all of its children are properly closed.
1569 The open child nodes are closed implicitly.
1570 .It Sy "appending missing end of block"
1571 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1572 At the end of the document, an explicit
1580 block, an equation, table, or
1582 conditional or ignore block is still open.
1583 The open block is closed implicitly.
1584 .It Sy "escaped character not allowed in a name"
1586 Macro, string and register identifiers consist of printable,
1587 non-whitespace ASCII characters.
1588 Escape sequences and characters and strings expressed in terms of them
1589 cannot form part of a name.
1590 The first argument of an
1598 request, or any argument of an
1600 request, or the name of a request or user defined macro being called,
1601 is terminated by an escape sequence.
1607 the request has no effect at all.
1614 what was parsed up to this point is used as the arguments to the request,
1615 and the rest of the input line is discarded including the escape sequence.
1616 When parsing for a request or a user-defined macro name to be called,
1617 only the escape sequence is discarded.
1618 The characters preceding it are used as the request or macro name,
1619 the characters following it are used as the arguments to the request or macro.
1620 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: Bd -file"
1622 For security reasons, the
1624 macro does not support the
1627 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1628 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1629 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1630 The argument is ignored including the file name following it.
1631 .It Sy "skipping display without arguments"
1635 block macro does not have any arguments.
1636 The block is discarded, and the block content is displayed in
1637 whatever mode was active before the block.
1638 .It Sy "missing list type, using -item"
1642 macro fails to specify the list type.
1643 .It Sy "missing manual name, using \(dq\(dq"
1647 or any call in the NAME section, lacks the required argument.
1648 .It Sy "uname(3) system call failed, using UNKNOWN"
1652 macro is called without arguments, and the
1657 can be compiled with
1659 .Fl D Cm OSNAME=\(dq\e\(dq Ar string Cm \e\(dq\(dq .
1661 .It Sy "unknown standard specifier"
1665 macro has an unknown argument and is discarded.
1666 .It Sy "skipping request without numeric argument"
1675 statement has a non-numeric or negative argument or no argument at all.
1676 The invalid request or statement is ignored.
1677 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: .so with absolute path or \(dq..\(dq"
1679 For security reasons,
1683 file inclusion requests only with relative paths
1684 and only without ascending to any parent directory.
1685 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1686 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1687 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1689 only shows the path as it appears behind
1691 .It Sy ".so request failed"
1695 request requires reading an external file, but the file could not be
1698 only shows the path as it appears behind
1700 .It Sy "skipping all arguments"
1701 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , roff
1717 macro in a list that don't support item heads, a
1736 block closing request is invoked with at least one argument.
1737 All arguments are ignored.
1738 .It Sy "skipping excess arguments"
1739 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1740 A macro or request is invoked with too many arguments:
1741 .Bl -dash -offset 2n -width 2n -compact
1750 with more than one argument
1753 with another argument after
1759 with more than one argument or with a non-integer argument
1764 family with more than two arguments
1767 with more than three arguments
1770 with more than five arguments
1776 with invalid arguments
1778 The excess arguments are ignored.
1780 .Ss Unsupported features
1782 .It Sy "input too large"
1786 cannot handle input files larger than its arbitrary size limit
1787 of 2^31 bytes (2 Gigabytes).
1788 Since useful manuals are always small, this is not a problem in practice.
1789 Parsing is aborted as soon as the condition is detected.
1790 .It Sy "unsupported control character"
1792 An ASCII control character supported by other
1794 implementations but not by
1796 was found in an input file.
1797 It is replaced by a question mark.
1798 .It Sy "unsupported roff request"
1800 An input file contains a
1802 request supported by GNU troff or Heirloom troff but not by
1804 and it is likely that this will cause information loss
1805 or considerable misformatting.
1806 .It Sy "eqn delim option in tbl"
1808 The options line of a table defines equation delimiters.
1809 Any equation source code contained in the table will be printed unformatted.
1810 .It Sy "unsupported table layout modifier"
1812 A table layout specification contains an
1815 The modifier is discarded.
1816 .It Sy "ignoring macro in table"
1817 .Pq tbl , mdoc , man
1818 A table contains an invocation of an
1822 macro or of an undefined macro.
1823 The macro is ignored, and its arguments are handled
1824 as if they were a text line.
1839 utility was written by
1840 .An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv
1841 and is maintained by
1842 .An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org .
git.ckatri.com / mandoc.git / blob