1 .\" $Id: mandoc.1,v 1.178 2017/03/08 19:40:59 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: March 8 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 in the following
105 If the first three bytes of the input file are the UTF-8 byte order
106 mark (BOM, 0xefbbbf), input is interpreted as
109 If the first or second line of the input file matches the
113 .D1 .\e" -*- Oo ...; Oc coding: Ar encoding ; No -*-
115 then input is interpreted according to
118 If the first non-ASCII byte in the file introduces a valid UTF-8
119 sequence, input is interpreted as
122 Otherwise, input is interpreted as
128 This overrides any earlier
136 Also reverts any earlier
141 .It Fl m Ns Ar format
145 for available formats.
149 Comma-separated output options.
154 for available formats.
158 Specify the minimum message
160 to be reported on the standard error output and to affect the exit status.
184 to exit after parsing a file that causes warnings or errors of at least
186 No formatted output will be produced from that file.
191 are requested, they can be joined with a comma, for example
192 .Fl W Cm error , Ns Cm stop .
194 Read input from zero or more files.
195 If unspecified, reads from stdin.
196 If multiple files are specified,
198 will halt with the first failed parse.
207 also supports the options
230 should only be used for legacy manuals.
234 which is also the default, determines encoding on-the-fly: if the first
241 parser is used; otherwise, the
246 files are specified with
248 each has its file-type determined this way.
249 If multiple files are
254 is specified, then this format is used exclusively.
258 utility accepts the following
260 arguments, which correspond to output modes:
261 .Bl -tag -width "-T markdown"
263 Produce 7-bit ASCII output.
267 Produce HTML5, CSS1, and MathML output.
271 Parse only: produce no output.
275 Encode output using the current locale.
290 .Sx Markdown Output .
296 Produce PostScript output.
298 .Sx PostScript Output .
300 Produce an indented parse tree.
302 .Sx Syntax tree output .
304 Encode output in the UTF\-8 multi-byte format.
308 This is a synonym for
312 If multiple input files are specified, these will be processed by the
313 corresponding filter in-order.
317 is rendered in standard 7-bit ASCII documented in
320 Font styles are applied by using back-spaced encoding such that an
324 .Sq _ Ns \e[bs] Ns c ,
327 is the back-space character number 8.
328 Emboldened characters are rendered as
329 .Sq c Ns \e[bs] Ns c .
331 The special characters documented in
333 are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent.
335 Output width is limited to 78 visible columns unless literal input lines
340 arguments are accepted:
342 .It Cm indent Ns = Ns Ar indent
343 The left margin for normal text is set to
345 blank characters instead of the default of five for
349 Increasing this is not recommended; it may result in degraded formatting,
350 for example overfull lines or ugly line breaks.
351 .It Cm width Ns = Ns Ar width
352 The output width is set to
354 which will normalise to \(>=58.
359 conforms to HTML5 using optional self-closing tags.
360 Default styles use only CSS1.
361 Equations rendered from
367 file documents style-sheet classes available for customising output.
368 If a style-sheet is not specified with
371 defaults to simple output (via an embedded style-sheet)
372 readable in any graphical or text-based web
375 Special characters are rendered in decimal-encoded UTF\-8.
379 arguments are accepted:
382 Omit the <!DOCTYPE> declaration and the <html>, <head>, and <body>
383 elements and only emit the subtree below the <body> element.
386 argument will be ignored.
387 This is useful when embedding manual content within existing documents.
388 .It Cm includes Ns = Ns Ar fmt
393 is used as a template for linked header files (usually via the
398 are replaced with the include filename.
399 The default is not to present a
401 .It Cm man Ns = Ns Ar fmt
405 .Ar ../html%S/%N.%S.html ,
406 is used as a template for linked manuals (usually via the
413 are replaced with the linked manual's name and section, respectively.
414 If no section is included, section 1 is assumed.
415 The default is not to
417 .It Cm style Ns = Ns Ar style.css
420 is used for an external style-sheet.
421 This must be a valid absolute or
425 Locale-depending output encoding is triggered with
429 This option is not available on all systems: systems without locale
430 support, or those whose internal representation is not natively UCS-4,
435 for font style specification and available command-line arguments.
437 Translate input format into
440 This is useful for distributing manual sources to legacy systems
447 is passed as input, it is translated into
449 If the input format is
451 the input is copied to the output, expanding any
455 The parser is also run, and as usual, the
459 are displayed before copying the input to the output.
466 .Lk http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax.text\
467 "John Gruber's 2004 specification" .
468 The output also almost conforms to the
469 .Lk http://commonmark.org/ CommonMark
472 The character set used for the markdown output is ASCII.
473 Non-ASCII characters are encoded as HTML entities.
474 Since that is not possible in literal font contexts, because these
475 are rendered as code spans and code blocks in the markdown output,
476 non-ASCII characters are transliterated to ASCII approximations in
479 Markdown is a very weak markup language, so all semantic markup is
480 lost, and even part of the presentational markup may be lost.
481 Do not use this as an intermediate step in converting to HTML;
491 input languages are not supported by
495 PDF-1.1 output may be generated by
498 .Sx PostScript Output
501 arguments and defaults.
502 .Ss PostScript Output
505 Level-2 pages may be generated by
507 Output pages default to letter sized and are rendered in the Times font
509 Margins are calculated as 1/9 the page length and width.
512 Special characters are rendered as in
517 arguments are accepted:
519 .It Cm paper Ns = Ns Ar name
529 You may also manually specify dimensions as
531 width by height in millimetres.
532 If an unknown value is encountered,
539 to force a UTF\-8 locale.
542 for details and options.
543 .Ss Syntax tree output
546 to show a human readable representation of the syntax tree.
547 It is useful for debugging the source code of manual pages.
548 The exact format is subject to change, so don't write parsers for it.
550 The first paragraph shows meta data found in the
555 line, or the fallbacks used.
557 In the tree dump, each output line shows one syntax tree node.
558 Child nodes are indented with respect to their parent node.
563 For macro nodes, the macro name; for text and
566 There is a special format for
570 Node type (text, elem, block, head, body, body-end, tail, tbl, eqn).
575 An opening parenthesis if the node is an opening delimiter.
577 An asterisk if the node starts a new input line.
579 The input line number (starting at one).
583 The input column number (starting at one).
585 A closing parenthesis if the node is a closing delimiter.
587 A full stop if the node ends a sentence.
589 BROKEN if the node is a block broken by another block.
591 NOSRC if the node is not in the input file,
592 but automatically generated from macros.
594 NOPRT if the node is not supposed to generate output
595 for any output format.
601 argument is accepted:
604 Skip validation and show the unvalidated syntax tree.
605 This can help to find out whether a given behaviour is caused by
606 the parser or by the validator.
607 Meta data is not available in this case.
610 .Bl -tag -width MANPAGER
612 Any non-empty value of the environment variable
614 will be used instead of the standard pagination program,
617 Specifies the pagination program to use when
620 If neither PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined,
628 utility exits with one of the following values, controlled by the message
634 .Bl -tag -width Ds -compact
636 No warnings or errors occurred, or those that did were ignored because
637 they were lower than the requested
640 At least one warning occurred, but no error, and
644 At least one parsing error occurred,
645 but no unsupported feature was encountered, and
651 At least one unsupported feature was encountered, and
658 Invalid command line arguments were specified.
659 No input files have been read.
661 An operating system error occurred, for example exhaustion
662 of memory, file descriptors, or process table entries.
665 to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file.
673 To page manuals to the terminal:
675 .Dl $ mandoc \-W all,stop mandoc.1 2\*(Gt&1 | less
676 .Dl $ mandoc mandoc.1 mdoc.3 mdoc.7 | less
678 To produce HTML manuals with
682 .Dl $ mandoc \-T html -O style=mandoc.css mdoc.7 \*(Gt mdoc.7.html
684 To check over a large set of manuals:
686 .Dl $ mandoc \-T lint \(gafind /usr/src -name \e*\e.[1-9]\(ga
688 To produce a series of PostScript manuals for A4 paper:
690 .Dl $ mandoc \-T ps \-O paper=a4 mdoc.7 man.7 \*(Gt manuals.ps
696 format, for use on systems lacking an
700 .Dl $ mandoc \-T man foo.mdoc \*(Gt foo.man
702 Messages displayed by
706 .D1 Nm Ns : Ar file : Ns Ar line : Ns Ar column : level : message : macro args
708 Line and column numbers start at 1.
709 Both are omitted for messages referring to an input file as a whole.
710 Macro names and arguments are omitted where meaningless.
711 Fatal messages about invalid command line arguments
712 or operating system errors, for example when memory is exhausted,
719 Message levels have the following meanings:
720 .Bl -tag -width "warning"
722 An input file uses unsupported low-level
725 The output may be incomplete and/or misformatted,
726 so using GNU troff instead of
728 to process the file may be preferable.
730 An input file contains invalid syntax that cannot be safely interpreted.
731 By discarding part of the input or inserting missing tokens,
732 the parser is able to continue, and the error does not prevent
733 generation of formatted output, but typically, preparing that
734 output involves information loss, broken document structure
735 or unintended formatting, no matter whether
737 or GNU troff is used.
738 In many cases, the output of
740 and GNU troff is identical, but in some,
742 is more resilient than GNU troff with respect to malformed input.
744 Non-existent or unreadable input files are also reported on the
747 In that case, the parser cannot even be started and no output
748 is produced from those input files.
750 An input file uses obsolete, discouraged or non-portable syntax.
751 All the same, the meaning of the input is unambiguous and a correct
752 rendering can be produced.
753 Documents causing warnings may render poorly when using other
754 formatting tools instead of
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
769 .Ss Warnings related to the document prologue
771 .It Sy "missing manual title, using UNTITLED"
775 macro has no arguments, or there is no
777 macro before the first non-prologue macro.
778 .It Sy "missing manual title, using \(dq\(dq"
782 macro, or it has no arguments.
783 .It Sy "lower case character in document title"
785 The title is still used as given in the
790 .It Sy "missing manual section, using \(dq\(dq"
796 macro lacks the mandatory section argument.
797 .It Sy "unknown manual section"
799 The section number in a
801 line is invalid, but still used.
802 .It Sy "missing date, using today's date"
804 The document was parsed as
810 macro has no arguments or only empty arguments;
811 or the document was parsed as
817 macro has less than three arguments or its third argument is empty.
818 .It Sy "cannot parse date, using it verbatim"
824 macro does not follow the conventional format.
825 .It Sy "missing Os macro, using \(dq\(dq"
827 The default or current system is not shown in this case.
828 .It Sy "duplicate prologue macro"
830 One of the prologue macros occurs more than once.
831 The last instance overrides all previous ones.
832 .It Sy "late prologue macro"
838 macro occurs after some non-prologue macro, but still takes effect.
839 .It Sy "skipping late title macro"
843 macro appears after the first non-prologue macro.
844 Traditional formatters cannot handle this because
845 they write the page header before parsing the document body.
846 Even though this technical restriction does not apply to
848 traditional semantics is preserved.
849 The late macro is discarded including its arguments.
850 .It Sy "prologue macros out of order"
852 The prologue macros are not given in the conventional order
856 All three macros are used even when given in another order.
858 .Ss Warnings regarding document structure
860 .It Sy ".so is fragile, better use ln(1)"
862 Including files only works when the parser program runs with the correct
863 current working directory.
864 .It Sy "no document body"
866 The document body contains neither text nor macros.
867 An empty document is shown, consisting only of a header and a footer line.
868 .It Sy "content before first section header"
870 Some macros or text precede the first
875 The offending macros and text are parsed and added to the top level
876 of the syntax tree, outside any section block.
877 .It Sy "first section is not NAME"
879 The argument of the first
887 .It Sy "NAME section without Nm before Nd"
889 The NAME section does not contain any
891 child macro before the first
894 .It Sy "NAME section without description"
896 The NAME section lacks the mandatory
899 .It Sy "description not at the end of NAME"
901 The NAME section does contain an
903 child macro, but other content follows it.
904 .It Sy "bad NAME section content"
906 The NAME section contains plain text or macros other than
910 .It Sy "missing comma before name"
912 The NAME section contains an
914 macro that is neither the first one nor preceded by a comma.
915 .It Sy "missing description line, using \(dq\(dq"
919 macro lacks the required argument.
920 The title line of the manual will end after the dash.
921 .It Sy "description line outside NAME section"
925 macro appears outside the NAME section.
926 The arguments are printed anyway and the following text is used for
928 but none of that behaviour is portable.
929 .It Sy "sections out of conventional order"
931 A standard section occurs after another section it usually precedes.
932 All section titles are used as given,
933 and the order of sections is not changed.
934 .It Sy "duplicate section title"
936 The same standard section title occurs more than once.
937 .It Sy "unexpected section"
939 A standard section header occurs in a section of the manual
940 where it normally isn't useful.
941 .It Sy "unusual Xr order"
943 In the SEE ALSO section, an
945 macro with a lower section number follows one with a higher number,
948 macros referring to the same section are out of alphabetical order.
949 .It Sy "unusual Xr punctuation"
951 In the SEE ALSO section, punctuation between two
953 macros differs from a single comma, or there is trailing punctuation
957 .It Sy "AUTHORS section without An macro"
959 An AUTHORS sections contains no
961 macros, or only empty ones.
962 Probably, there are author names lacking markup.
964 .Ss "Warnings related to macros and nesting"
966 .It Sy "obsolete macro"
970 manual for replacements.
971 .It Sy "macro neither callable nor escaped"
973 The name of a macro that is not callable appears on a macro line.
974 It is printed verbatim.
975 If the intention is to call it, move it to its own input line;
976 otherwise, escape it by prepending
978 .It Sy "skipping paragraph macro"
981 documents, this happens
984 at the beginning and end of sections and subsections
986 right before non-compact lists and displays
988 at the end of items in non-column, non-compact lists
990 and for multiple consecutive paragraph macros.
994 documents, it happens
1006 macros having neither head nor body arguments
1017 .It Sy "moving paragraph macro out of list"
1021 list contains a trailing paragraph macro.
1022 The paragraph macro is moved after the end of the list.
1023 .It Sy "skipping no-space macro"
1025 An input line begins with an
1028 The macro is ignored.
1029 .It Sy "blocks badly nested"
1031 If two blocks intersect, one should completely contain the other.
1032 Otherwise, rendered output is likely to look strange in any output
1033 format, and rendering in SGML-based output formats is likely to be
1034 outright wrong because such languages do not support badly nested
1036 Typical examples of badly nested blocks are
1037 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bo \&Ac \&Bc
1039 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bq \&Ac .
1047 .It Sy "nested displays are not portable"
1054 display occurs nested inside another
1059 but fails with most other implementations.
1060 .It Sy "moving content out of list"
1064 list block contains text or macros before the first
1067 The offending children are moved before the beginning of the list.
1068 .It Sy "fill mode already enabled, skipping"
1072 request occurs even though the document is still in fill mode,
1073 or already switched back to fill mode.
1075 .It Sy "fill mode already disabled, skipping"
1079 request occurs even though the document already switched to no-fill mode
1080 and did not switch back to fill mode yet.
1082 .It Sy "line scope broken"
1084 While parsing the next-line scope of the previous macro,
1085 another macro is found that prematurely terminates the previous one.
1086 The previous, interrupted macro is deleted from the parse tree.
1088 .Ss "Warnings related to missing arguments"
1090 .It Sy "skipping empty request"
1092 The macro name is missing from a macro definition request,
1095 control statement or operation keyword lacks its required argument.
1096 .It Sy "conditional request controls empty scope"
1098 A conditional request is only useful if any of the following
1099 follows it on the same logical input line:
1104 keyword to open a multi-line scope.
1106 A request or macro or some text, resulting in a single-line scope.
1108 The immediate end of the logical line without any intervening whitespace,
1109 resulting in next-line scope.
1111 Here, a conditional request is followed by trailing whitespace only,
1112 and there is no other content on its logical input line.
1113 Note that it doesn't matter whether the logical input line is split
1114 across multiple physical input lines using
1116 line continuation characters.
1117 This is one of the rare cases
1118 where trailing whitespace is syntactically significant.
1119 The conditional request controls a scope containing whitespace only,
1120 so it is unlikely to have a significant effect,
1121 except that it may control a following
1124 .It Sy "skipping empty macro"
1126 The indicated macro has no arguments and hence no effect.
1127 .It Sy "empty block"
1138 block contains nothing in its body and will produce no output.
1139 .It Sy "empty argument, using 0n"
1141 The required width is missing after
1148 .It Sy "missing display type, using -ragged"
1152 macro is invoked without the required display type.
1153 .It Sy "list type is not the first argument"
1157 macro, at least one other argument precedes the type argument.
1160 utility copes with any argument order, but some other
1162 implementations do not.
1163 .It Sy "missing -width in -tag list, using 8n"
1172 .It Sy "missing utility name, using \(dq\(dq"
1176 macro is called without an argument before
1178 has first been called with an argument.
1179 .It Sy "missing function name, using \(dq\(dq"
1183 macro is called without an argument.
1184 No function name is printed.
1185 .It Sy "empty head in list item"
1197 macro lacks the required argument.
1198 The item head is left empty.
1199 .It Sy "empty list item"
1211 An empty list item is shown.
1212 .It Sy "missing font type, using \efR"
1216 macro has no argument.
1217 It switches to the default font.
1218 .It Sy "unknown font type, using \efR"
1222 argument is invalid.
1223 The default font is used instead.
1224 .It Sy "nothing follows prefix"
1228 macro has no argument, or only one argument and no macro follows
1229 on the same input line.
1230 This defeats its purpose; in particular, spacing is not suppressed
1231 before the text or macros following on the next input line.
1232 .It Sy "empty reference block"
1236 macro is immediately followed by an
1238 macro on the next input line.
1239 Such an empty block does not produce any output.
1240 .It Sy "missing section argument"
1244 macro lacks its second, section number argument.
1245 The first argument, i.e. the name, is printed, but without subsequent
1247 .It Sy "missing -std argument, adding it"
1253 macro lacks the required
1260 even when it is not specified, but other implementations may not.
1261 .It Sy "missing option string, using \(dq\(dq"
1265 macro is invoked without any argument.
1266 An empty pair of square brackets is shown.
1267 .It Sy "missing resource identifier, using \(dq\(dq"
1271 macro is invoked without any argument.
1272 An empty pair of angle brackets is shown.
1273 .It Sy "missing eqn box, using \(dq\(dq"
1275 A diacritic mark or a binary operator is found,
1276 but there is nothing to the left of it.
1277 An empty box is inserted.
1279 .Ss "Warnings related to bad macro arguments"
1281 .It Sy "unterminated quoted argument"
1283 Macro arguments can be enclosed in double quote characters
1284 such that space characters and macro names contained in the quoted
1285 argument need not be escaped.
1286 The closing quote of the last argument of a macro can be omitted.
1287 However, omitting it is not recommended because it makes the code
1289 .It Sy "duplicate argument"
1295 macro has more than one
1302 All but the last instances of these arguments are ignored.
1303 .It Sy "skipping duplicate argument"
1307 macro has more than one
1312 All but the first of these arguments are ignored.
1313 .It Sy "skipping duplicate display type"
1317 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1318 .It Sy "skipping duplicate list type"
1322 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1323 .It Sy "skipping -width argument"
1337 .It Sy "wrong number of cells"
1340 list, the number of tabs or
1342 macros is less than the number expected from the list header line
1343 or exceeds the expected number by more than one.
1344 Missing cells remain empty, and all cells exceeding the number of
1345 columns are joined into one single cell.
1346 .It Sy "unknown AT&T UNIX version"
1350 macro has an invalid argument.
1351 It is used verbatim, with
1354 .It Sy "comma in function argument"
1360 macro contains a comma; it should probably be split into two arguments.
1361 .It Sy "parenthesis in function name"
1363 The first argument of an
1367 macro contains an opening or closing parenthesis; that's probably wrong,
1368 parentheses are added automatically.
1369 .It Sy "invalid content in Rs block"
1373 block contains plain text or non-% macros.
1374 The bogus content is left in the syntax tree.
1375 Formatting may be poor.
1376 .It Sy "invalid Boolean argument"
1380 macro has an argument other than
1384 The invalid argument is moved out of the macro, which leaves the macro
1385 empty, causing it to toggle the spacing mode.
1386 .It Sy "unknown font, skipping request"
1394 layout modifier has an unknown
1397 .It Sy "odd number of characters in request"
1401 request contains an odd number of characters.
1402 The last character is mapped to the blank character.
1404 .Ss "Warnings related to plain text"
1406 .It Sy "blank line in fill mode, using .sp"
1408 The meaning of blank input lines is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1409 In fill mode, line breaks of text input lines are not supposed to be
1411 However, for compatibility with groff, blank lines in fill mode
1415 .It Sy "tab in filled text"
1417 The meaning of tab characters is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1418 In fill mode, whitespace is not supposed to be significant
1419 on text input lines.
1420 As an implementation dependent choice, tab characters on text lines
1421 are passed through to the formatters in any case.
1422 Given that the text before the tab character will be filled,
1423 it is hard to predict which tab stop position the tab will advance to.
1424 .It Sy "whitespace at end of input line"
1425 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1426 Whitespace at the end of input lines is almost never semantically
1427 significant \(em but in the odd case where it might be, it is
1428 extremely confusing when reviewing and maintaining documents.
1429 .It Sy "new sentence, new line"
1431 A new sentence starts in the middle of a text line.
1432 Start it on a new input line to help formatters produce correct spacing.
1433 .It Sy "bad comment style"
1435 Comment lines start with a dot, a backslash, and a double-quote character.
1438 utility treats the line as a comment line even without the backslash,
1439 but leaving out the backslash might not be portable.
1440 .It Sy "invalid escape sequence"
1442 An escape sequence has an invalid opening argument delimiter, lacks the
1443 closing argument delimiter, or the argument has too few characters.
1444 If the argument is incomplete,
1448 expand to an empty string,
1454 to the length of the incomplete argument.
1455 All other invalid escape sequences are ignored.
1456 .It Sy "undefined string, using \(dq\(dq"
1458 If a string is used without being defined before,
1459 its value is implicitly set to the empty string.
1460 However, defining strings explicitly before use
1461 keeps the code more readable.
1463 .Ss "Warnings related to tables"
1465 .It Sy "tbl line starts with span"
1467 The first cell in a table layout line is a horizontal span
1469 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1470 .It Sy "tbl column starts with span"
1472 The first line of a table layout specification
1473 requests a vertical span
1475 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1476 .It Sy "skipping vertical bar in tbl layout"
1478 A table layout specification contains more than two consecutive vertical bars.
1479 A double bar is printed, all additional bars are discarded.
1481 .Ss "Errors related to tables"
1483 .It Sy "non-alphabetic character in tbl options"
1485 The table options line contains a character other than a letter,
1486 blank, or comma where the beginning of an option name is expected.
1487 The character is ignored.
1488 .It Sy "skipping unknown tbl option"
1490 The table options line contains a string of letters that does not
1491 match any known option name.
1492 The word is ignored.
1493 .It Sy "missing tbl option argument"
1495 A table option that requires an argument is not followed by an
1496 opening parenthesis, or the opening parenthesis is immediately
1497 followed by a closing parenthesis.
1498 The option is ignored.
1499 .It Sy "wrong tbl option argument size"
1501 A table option argument contains an invalid number of characters.
1502 Both the option and the argument are ignored.
1503 .It Sy "empty tbl layout"
1505 A table layout specification is completely empty,
1506 specifying zero lines and zero columns.
1507 As a fallback, a single left-justified column is used.
1508 .It Sy "invalid character in tbl layout"
1510 A table layout specification contains a character that can neither
1511 be interpreted as a layout key character nor as a layout modifier,
1512 or a modifier precedes the first key.
1513 The invalid character is discarded.
1514 .It Sy "unmatched parenthesis in tbl layout"
1516 A table layout specification contains an opening parenthesis,
1517 but no matching closing parenthesis.
1518 The rest of the input line, starting from the parenthesis, has no effect.
1519 .It Sy "tbl without any data cells"
1521 A table does not contain any data cells.
1522 It will probably produce no output.
1523 .It Sy "ignoring data in spanned tbl cell"
1525 A table cell is marked as a horizontal span
1529 in the table layout, but it contains data.
1530 The data is ignored.
1531 .It Sy "ignoring extra tbl data cells"
1533 A data line contains more cells than the corresponding layout line.
1534 The data in the extra cells is ignored.
1535 .It Sy "data block open at end of tbl"
1537 A data block is opened with
1539 but never closed with a matching
1541 The remaining data lines of the table are all put into one cell,
1542 and any remaining cells stay empty.
1544 .Ss "Errors related to roff, mdoc, and man code"
1546 .It Sy "input stack limit exceeded, infinite loop?"
1548 Explicit recursion limits are implemented for the following features,
1549 in order to prevent infinite loops:
1552 expansion of nested escape sequences
1553 including expansion of strings and number registers,
1555 expansion of nested user-defined macros,
1561 When a limit is hit, the output is incorrect, typically losing
1562 some content, but the parser can continue.
1563 .It Sy "skipping bad character"
1564 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1565 The input file contains a byte that is not a printable
1568 The message mentions the character number.
1569 The offending byte is replaced with a question mark
1571 Consider editing the input file to replace the byte with an ASCII
1572 transliteration of the intended character.
1573 .It Sy "skipping unknown macro"
1574 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1575 The first identifier on a request or macro line is neither recognized as a
1577 request, nor as a user-defined macro, nor, respectively, as an
1582 It may be mistyped or unsupported.
1583 The request or macro is discarded including its arguments.
1584 .It Sy "skipping insecure request"
1586 An input file attempted to run a shell command
1587 or to read or write an external file.
1588 Such attempts are denied for security reasons.
1589 .It Sy "skipping item outside list"
1593 macro occurs outside any
1598 delimiter occurs outside any pile.
1599 It is discarded including its arguments.
1600 .It Sy "skipping column outside column list"
1604 macro occurs outside any
1607 It is discarded including its arguments.
1608 .It Sy "skipping end of block that is not open"
1609 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1610 Various syntax elements can only be used to explicitly close blocks
1611 that have previously been opened.
1614 block closing macro, a
1621 right delimiter or closing brace, or the end of an equation, table, or
1623 conditional request is encountered but no matching block is open.
1624 The offending request or macro is discarded.
1625 .It Sy "fewer RS blocks open, skipping"
1629 macro is invoked with an argument, but less than the specified number of
1635 .It Sy "inserting missing end of block"
1639 macros as well as tables require explicit closing by dedicated macros.
1640 A block that doesn't support bad nesting
1641 ends before all of its children are properly closed.
1642 The open child nodes are closed implicitly.
1643 .It Sy "appending missing end of block"
1644 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1645 At the end of the document, an explicit
1653 block, an equation, table, or
1655 conditional or ignore block is still open.
1656 The open block is closed implicitly.
1657 .It Sy "escaped character not allowed in a name"
1659 Macro, string and register identifiers consist of printable,
1660 non-whitespace ASCII characters.
1661 Escape sequences and characters and strings expressed in terms of them
1662 cannot form part of a name.
1663 The first argument of an
1671 request, or any argument of an
1673 request, or the name of a request or user defined macro being called,
1674 is terminated by an escape sequence.
1680 the request has no effect at all.
1687 what was parsed up to this point is used as the arguments to the request,
1688 and the rest of the input line is discarded including the escape sequence.
1689 When parsing for a request or a user-defined macro name to be called,
1690 only the escape sequence is discarded.
1691 The characters preceding it are used as the request or macro name,
1692 the characters following it are used as the arguments to the request or macro.
1693 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: Bd -file"
1695 For security reasons, the
1697 macro does not support the
1700 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1701 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1702 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1703 The argument is ignored including the file name following it.
1704 .It Sy "skipping display without arguments"
1708 block macro does not have any arguments.
1709 The block is discarded, and the block content is displayed in
1710 whatever mode was active before the block.
1711 .It Sy "missing list type, using -item"
1715 macro fails to specify the list type.
1716 .It Sy "missing manual name, using \(dq\(dq"
1720 or any call in the NAME section, lacks the required argument.
1721 .It Sy "uname(3) system call failed, using UNKNOWN"
1725 macro is called without arguments, and the
1730 can be compiled with
1732 .Fl D Cm OSNAME=\(dq\e\(dq Ar string Cm \e\(dq\(dq .
1734 .It Sy "unknown standard specifier"
1738 macro has an unknown argument and is discarded.
1739 .It Sy "skipping request without numeric argument"
1748 statement has a non-numeric or negative argument or no argument at all.
1749 The invalid request or statement is ignored.
1750 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: .so with absolute path or \(dq..\(dq"
1752 For security reasons,
1756 file inclusion requests only with relative paths
1757 and only without ascending to any parent directory.
1758 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1759 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1760 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1762 only shows the path as it appears behind
1764 .It Sy ".so request failed"
1768 request requires reading an external file, but the file could not be
1771 only shows the path as it appears behind
1773 .It Sy "skipping all arguments"
1774 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , roff
1790 macro in a list that don't support item heads, a
1809 block closing request is invoked with at least one argument.
1810 All arguments are ignored.
1811 .It Sy "skipping excess arguments"
1812 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1813 A macro or request is invoked with too many arguments:
1814 .Bl -dash -offset 2n -width 2n -compact
1823 with more than one argument
1826 with another argument after
1832 with more than one argument or with a non-integer argument
1837 family with more than two arguments
1840 with more than three arguments
1843 with more than five arguments
1849 with invalid arguments
1851 The excess arguments are ignored.
1853 .Ss Unsupported features
1855 .It Sy "input too large"
1859 cannot handle input files larger than its arbitrary size limit
1860 of 2^31 bytes (2 Gigabytes).
1861 Since useful manuals are always small, this is not a problem in practice.
1862 Parsing is aborted as soon as the condition is detected.
1863 .It Sy "unsupported control character"
1865 An ASCII control character supported by other
1867 implementations but not by
1869 was found in an input file.
1870 It is replaced by a question mark.
1871 .It Sy "unsupported roff request"
1873 An input file contains a
1875 request supported by GNU troff or Heirloom troff but not by
1877 and it is likely that this will cause information loss
1878 or considerable misformatting.
1879 .It Sy "eqn delim option in tbl"
1881 The options line of a table defines equation delimiters.
1882 Any equation source code contained in the table will be printed unformatted.
1883 .It Sy "unsupported table layout modifier"
1885 A table layout specification contains an
1888 The modifier is discarded.
1889 .It Sy "ignoring macro in table"
1890 .Pq tbl , mdoc , man
1891 A table contains an invocation of an
1895 macro or of an undefined macro.
1896 The macro is ignored, and its arguments are handled
1897 as if they were a text line.
1911 utility first appeared in
1925 utility was written by
1926 .An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv
1927 and is maintained by
1928 .An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org .
git.ckatri.com / mandoc.git / blob