1 .\" $Id: mandoc.1,v 1.199 2017/06/13 15:06:56 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: June 13 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
78 This can also be used to perform style checks according to the
79 conventions of one operating system while running on a different
84 Specify the input encoding.
92 If not specified, autodetection uses the first match in the following
96 If the first three bytes of the input file are the UTF-8 byte order
97 mark (BOM, 0xefbbbf), input is interpreted as
100 If the first or second line of the input file matches the
104 .D1 .\e" -*- Oo ...; Oc coding: Ar encoding ; No -*-
106 then input is interpreted according to
109 If the first non-ASCII byte in the file introduces a valid UTF-8
110 sequence, input is interpreted as
113 Otherwise, input is interpreted as
119 all input files are interpreted as
123 all input files are interpreted as
125 By default, the input language is automatically detected for each file:
126 if the the first macro is
132 parser is used; otherwise, the
135 With other arguments,
139 Comma-separated output options.
144 for available formats.
148 Specify the minimum message
150 to be reported on the standard error output and to affect the exit status.
175 to exit after parsing a file that causes warnings or errors of at least
177 No formatted output will be produced from that file.
182 are requested, they can be joined with a comma, for example
183 .Fl W Cm error , Ns Cm stop .
185 Read input from zero or more files.
186 If unspecified, reads from stdin.
187 If multiple files are specified,
189 will halt with the first failed parse.
194 are also supported and are documented in man(1).
201 also supports the options
208 are mutually exclusive and override each other.
212 utility accepts the following
214 arguments, which correspond to output modes:
215 .Bl -tag -width "-T markdown"
217 Produce 7-bit ASCII output.
221 Produce HTML5, CSS1, and MathML output.
225 Parse only: produce no output.
229 Encode output using the current locale.
244 .Sx Markdown Output .
250 Produce PostScript output.
252 .Sx PostScript Output .
254 Produce an indented parse tree.
256 .Sx Syntax tree output .
258 Encode output in the UTF\-8 multi-byte format.
263 If multiple input files are specified, these will be processed by the
264 corresponding filter in-order.
268 is rendered in standard 7-bit ASCII documented in
271 Font styles are applied by using back-spaced encoding such that an
275 .Sq _ Ns \e[bs] Ns c ,
278 is the back-space character number 8.
279 Emboldened characters are rendered as
280 .Sq c Ns \e[bs] Ns c .
282 The special characters documented in
284 are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent.
286 Output width is limited to 78 visible columns unless literal input lines
291 arguments are accepted:
293 .It Cm indent Ns = Ns Ar indent
294 The left margin for normal text is set to
296 blank characters instead of the default of five for
300 Increasing this is not recommended; it may result in degraded formatting,
301 for example overfull lines or ugly line breaks.
302 .It Cm width Ns = Ns Ar width
303 The output width is set to
309 conforms to HTML5 using optional self-closing tags.
310 Default styles use only CSS1.
311 Equations rendered from
317 file documents style-sheet classes available for customising output.
318 If a style-sheet is not specified with
321 defaults to simple output (via an embedded style-sheet)
322 readable in any graphical or text-based web
325 Special characters are rendered in decimal-encoded UTF\-8.
329 arguments are accepted:
332 Omit the <!DOCTYPE> declaration and the <html>, <head>, and <body>
333 elements and only emit the subtree below the <body> element.
336 argument will be ignored.
337 This is useful when embedding manual content within existing documents.
338 .It Cm includes Ns = Ns Ar fmt
343 is used as a template for linked header files (usually via the
348 are replaced with the include filename.
349 The default is not to present a
351 .It Cm man Ns = Ns Ar fmt
355 .Ar ../html%S/%N.%S.html ,
356 is used as a template for linked manuals (usually via the
363 are replaced with the linked manual's name and section, respectively.
364 If no section is included, section 1 is assumed.
365 The default is not to
367 .It Cm style Ns = Ns Ar style.css
370 is used for an external style-sheet.
371 This must be a valid absolute or
375 Locale-depending output encoding is triggered with
379 This option is not available on all systems: systems without locale
380 support, or those whose internal representation is not natively UCS-4,
385 for font style specification and available command-line arguments.
387 Translate input format into
390 This is useful for distributing manual sources to legacy systems
397 is passed as input, it is translated into
399 If the input format is
401 the input is copied to the output, expanding any
405 The parser is also run, and as usual, the
409 are displayed before copying the input to the output.
416 .Lk http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax.text\
417 "John Gruber's 2004 specification" .
418 The output also almost conforms to the
419 .Lk http://commonmark.org/ CommonMark
422 The character set used for the markdown output is ASCII.
423 Non-ASCII characters are encoded as HTML entities.
424 Since that is not possible in literal font contexts, because these
425 are rendered as code spans and code blocks in the markdown output,
426 non-ASCII characters are transliterated to ASCII approximations in
429 Markdown is a very weak markup language, so all semantic markup is
430 lost, and even part of the presentational markup may be lost.
431 Do not use this as an intermediate step in converting to HTML;
441 input languages are not supported by
445 PDF-1.1 output may be generated by
448 .Sx PostScript Output
451 arguments and defaults.
452 .Ss PostScript Output
455 Level-2 pages may be generated by
457 Output pages default to letter sized and are rendered in the Times font
459 Margins are calculated as 1/9 the page length and width.
462 Special characters are rendered as in
467 arguments are accepted:
469 .It Cm paper Ns = Ns Ar name
479 You may also manually specify dimensions as
481 width by height in millimetres.
482 If an unknown value is encountered,
489 to force a UTF\-8 locale.
492 for details and options.
493 .Ss Syntax tree output
496 to show a human readable representation of the syntax tree.
497 It is useful for debugging the source code of manual pages.
498 The exact format is subject to change, so don't write parsers for it.
500 The first paragraph shows meta data found in the
505 line, or the fallbacks used.
507 In the tree dump, each output line shows one syntax tree node.
508 Child nodes are indented with respect to their parent node.
513 For macro nodes, the macro name; for text and
516 There is a special format for
520 Node type (text, elem, block, head, body, body-end, tail, tbl, eqn).
525 An opening parenthesis if the node is an opening delimiter.
527 An asterisk if the node starts a new input line.
529 The input line number (starting at one).
533 The input column number (starting at one).
535 A closing parenthesis if the node is a closing delimiter.
537 A full stop if the node ends a sentence.
539 BROKEN if the node is a block broken by another block.
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.
551 argument is accepted:
554 Skip validation and show the unvalidated syntax tree.
555 This can help to find out whether a given behaviour is caused by
556 the parser or by the validator.
557 Meta data is not available in this case.
560 .Bl -tag -width MANPAGER
562 Any non-empty value of the environment variable
564 is used instead of the standard pagination program,
575 Specifies the pagination program to use when
578 If neither PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined,
591 utility exits with one of the following values, controlled by the message
597 .Bl -tag -width Ds -compact
599 No style suggestions, warnings or errors occurred, or those that
600 did were ignored because they were lower than the requested
603 At least one style suggestion occurred, but no warning or error, and
607 At least one warning occurred, but no error, and
613 At least one parsing error occurred,
614 but no unsupported feature was encountered, and
620 At least one unsupported feature was encountered, and
626 Invalid command line arguments were specified.
627 No input files have been read.
629 An operating system error occurred, for example exhaustion
630 of memory, file descriptors, or process table entries.
633 to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file.
641 To page manuals to the terminal:
643 .Dl $ mandoc -l mandoc.1 man.1 apropos.1 makewhatis.8
645 To produce HTML manuals with
649 .Dl $ mandoc \-T html -O style=mandoc.css mdoc.7 \*(Gt mdoc.7.html
651 To check over a large set of manuals:
653 .Dl $ mandoc \-T lint \(gafind /usr/src -name \e*\e.[1-9]\(ga
655 To produce a series of PostScript manuals for A4 paper:
657 .Dl $ mandoc \-T ps \-O paper=a4 mdoc.7 man.7 \*(Gt manuals.ps
663 format, for use on systems lacking an
667 .Dl $ mandoc \-T man foo.mdoc \*(Gt foo.man
669 Messages displayed by
673 .D1 Nm Ns : Ar file : Ns Ar line : Ns Ar column : level : message : macro args
675 Line and column numbers start at 1.
676 Both are omitted for messages referring to an input file as a whole.
677 Macro names and arguments are omitted where meaningless.
678 Fatal messages about invalid command line arguments
679 or operating system errors, for example when memory is exhausted,
686 Message levels have the following meanings:
687 .Bl -tag -width "warning"
689 An input file uses unsupported low-level
692 The output may be incomplete and/or misformatted,
693 so using GNU troff instead of
695 to process the file may be preferable.
697 An input file contains invalid syntax that cannot be safely interpreted.
698 By discarding part of the input or inserting missing tokens,
699 the parser is able to continue, and the error does not prevent
700 generation of formatted output, but typically, preparing that
701 output involves information loss, broken document structure
702 or unintended formatting, no matter whether
704 or GNU troff is used.
705 In many cases, the output of
707 and GNU troff is identical, but in some,
709 is more resilient than GNU troff with respect to malformed input.
711 Non-existent or unreadable input files are also reported on the
714 In that case, the parser cannot even be started and no output
715 is produced from those input files.
717 An input file uses obsolete, discouraged or non-portable syntax.
718 All the same, the meaning of the input is unambiguous and a correct
719 rendering can be produced.
720 Documents causing warnings may render poorly when using other
721 formatting tools instead of
724 An input file uses dubious or discouraged style.
725 This is not a complaint about the syntax, and probably neither
726 formatting nor portability are in danger.
727 While great care is taken to avoid false positives on the higher
730 level tries to reduce the probability that issues go unnoticed,
731 so it may occasionally issue bogus suggestions.
732 Please use your good judgement to decide whether any particular
734 suggestion really justifies a change to the input file.
743 levels except those about non-existent or unreadable input files
744 are hidden unless their level, or a lower level, is requested using a
750 As indicated below, some style checks are only performed if a
751 specific operating system name occurs in the arguments of the
755 command line option, or, if neither are present, in the return value
760 .It Sy "useless macro"
768 Simply delete it: it serves no useful purpose.
769 .It Sy "consider using OS macro"
771 A string was found in plain text or in a
773 macro that could be represented using
779 .It Sy "errnos out of order"
785 list are not in alphabetical order.
786 .It Sy "duplicate errno"
790 list contains two consecutive
792 entries describing the same
795 .It Sy "description line ends with a full stop"
797 Do not use punctuation at the end of an
800 .It Sy "no blank before trailing delimiter"
802 The last argument of a macro that supports trailing delimiter
803 arguments is longer than one byte and ends with a trailing delimiter.
804 Consider inserting a blank such that the delimiter becomes a separate
805 argument, thus moving it out of the scope of the macro.
806 .It Sy "function name without markup"
808 A word followed by an empty pair of parentheses occurs on a text line.
815 .Ss Warnings related to the document prologue
817 .It Sy "missing manual title, using UNTITLED"
821 macro has no arguments, or there is no
823 macro before the first non-prologue macro.
824 .It Sy "missing manual title, using \(dq\(dq"
828 macro, or it has no arguments.
829 .It Sy "lower case character in document title"
831 The title is still used as given in the
836 .It Sy "missing manual section, using \(dq\(dq"
842 macro lacks the mandatory section argument.
843 .It Sy "unknown manual section"
845 The section number in a
847 line is invalid, but still used.
848 .It Sy "missing date, using today's date"
850 The document was parsed as
856 macro has no arguments or only empty arguments;
857 or the document was parsed as
863 macro has less than three arguments or its third argument is empty.
864 .It Sy "cannot parse date, using it verbatim"
870 macro does not follow the conventional format.
871 .It Sy "missing Os macro, using \(dq\(dq"
873 The default or current system is not shown in this case.
874 .It Sy "duplicate prologue macro"
876 One of the prologue macros occurs more than once.
877 The last instance overrides all previous ones.
878 .It Sy "late prologue macro"
884 macro occurs after some non-prologue macro, but still takes effect.
885 .It Sy "skipping late title macro"
889 macro appears after the first non-prologue macro.
890 Traditional formatters cannot handle this because
891 they write the page header before parsing the document body.
892 Even though this technical restriction does not apply to
894 traditional semantics is preserved.
895 The late macro is discarded including its arguments.
896 .It Sy "prologue macros out of order"
898 The prologue macros are not given in the conventional order
902 All three macros are used even when given in another order.
904 .Ss Warnings regarding document structure
906 .It Sy ".so is fragile, better use ln(1)"
908 Including files only works when the parser program runs with the correct
909 current working directory.
910 .It Sy "no document body"
912 The document body contains neither text nor macros.
913 An empty document is shown, consisting only of a header and a footer line.
914 .It Sy "content before first section header"
916 Some macros or text precede the first
921 The offending macros and text are parsed and added to the top level
922 of the syntax tree, outside any section block.
923 .It Sy "first section is not NAME"
925 The argument of the first
933 .It Sy "NAME section without Nm before Nd"
935 The NAME section does not contain any
937 child macro before the first
940 .It Sy "NAME section without description"
942 The NAME section lacks the mandatory
945 .It Sy "description not at the end of NAME"
947 The NAME section does contain an
949 child macro, but other content follows it.
950 .It Sy "bad NAME section content"
952 The NAME section contains plain text or macros other than
956 .It Sy "missing comma before name"
958 The NAME section contains an
960 macro that is neither the first one nor preceded by a comma.
961 .It Sy "missing description line, using \(dq\(dq"
965 macro lacks the required argument.
966 The title line of the manual will end after the dash.
967 .It Sy "description line outside NAME section"
971 macro appears outside the NAME section.
972 The arguments are printed anyway and the following text is used for
974 but none of that behaviour is portable.
975 .It Sy "sections out of conventional order"
977 A standard section occurs after another section it usually precedes.
978 All section titles are used as given,
979 and the order of sections is not changed.
980 .It Sy "duplicate section title"
982 The same standard section title occurs more than once.
983 .It Sy "unexpected section"
985 A standard section header occurs in a section of the manual
986 where it normally isn't useful.
987 .It Sy "unusual Xr order"
989 In the SEE ALSO section, an
991 macro with a lower section number follows one with a higher number,
994 macros referring to the same section are out of alphabetical order.
995 .It Sy "unusual Xr punctuation"
997 In the SEE ALSO section, punctuation between two
999 macros differs from a single comma, or there is trailing punctuation
1003 .It Sy "AUTHORS section without An macro"
1005 An AUTHORS sections contains no
1007 macros, or only empty ones.
1008 Probably, there are author names lacking markup.
1010 .Ss "Warnings related to macros and nesting"
1012 .It Sy "obsolete macro"
1016 manual for replacements.
1017 .It Sy "macro neither callable nor escaped"
1019 The name of a macro that is not callable appears on a macro line.
1020 It is printed verbatim.
1021 If the intention is to call it, move it to its own input line;
1022 otherwise, escape it by prepending
1024 .It Sy "skipping paragraph macro"
1027 documents, this happens
1030 at the beginning and end of sections and subsections
1032 right before non-compact lists and displays
1034 at the end of items in non-column, non-compact lists
1036 and for multiple consecutive paragraph macros.
1040 documents, it happens
1052 macros having neither head nor body arguments
1063 .It Sy "moving paragraph macro out of list"
1067 list contains a trailing paragraph macro.
1068 The paragraph macro is moved after the end of the list.
1069 .It Sy "skipping no-space macro"
1071 An input line begins with an
1074 The macro is ignored.
1075 .It Sy "blocks badly nested"
1077 If two blocks intersect, one should completely contain the other.
1078 Otherwise, rendered output is likely to look strange in any output
1079 format, and rendering in SGML-based output formats is likely to be
1080 outright wrong because such languages do not support badly nested
1082 Typical examples of badly nested blocks are
1083 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bo \&Ac \&Bc
1085 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bq \&Ac .
1093 .It Sy "nested displays are not portable"
1100 display occurs nested inside another
1105 but fails with most other implementations.
1106 .It Sy "moving content out of list"
1110 list block contains text or macros before the first
1113 The offending children are moved before the beginning of the list.
1114 .It Sy "fill mode already enabled, skipping"
1118 request occurs even though the document is still in fill mode,
1119 or already switched back to fill mode.
1121 .It Sy "fill mode already disabled, skipping"
1125 request occurs even though the document already switched to no-fill mode
1126 and did not switch back to fill mode yet.
1128 .It Sy "line scope broken"
1130 While parsing the next-line scope of the previous macro,
1131 another macro is found that prematurely terminates the previous one.
1132 The previous, interrupted macro is deleted from the parse tree.
1134 .Ss "Warnings related to missing arguments"
1136 .It Sy "skipping empty request"
1138 The macro name is missing from a macro definition request,
1141 control statement or operation keyword lacks its required argument.
1142 .It Sy "conditional request controls empty scope"
1144 A conditional request is only useful if any of the following
1145 follows it on the same logical input line:
1150 keyword to open a multi-line scope.
1152 A request or macro or some text, resulting in a single-line scope.
1154 The immediate end of the logical line without any intervening whitespace,
1155 resulting in next-line scope.
1157 Here, a conditional request is followed by trailing whitespace only,
1158 and there is no other content on its logical input line.
1159 Note that it doesn't matter whether the logical input line is split
1160 across multiple physical input lines using
1162 line continuation characters.
1163 This is one of the rare cases
1164 where trailing whitespace is syntactically significant.
1165 The conditional request controls a scope containing whitespace only,
1166 so it is unlikely to have a significant effect,
1167 except that it may control a following
1170 .It Sy "skipping empty macro"
1172 The indicated macro has no arguments and hence no effect.
1173 .It Sy "empty block"
1184 block contains nothing in its body and will produce no output.
1185 .It Sy "empty argument, using 0n"
1187 The required width is missing after
1194 .It Sy "missing display type, using -ragged"
1198 macro is invoked without the required display type.
1199 .It Sy "list type is not the first argument"
1203 macro, at least one other argument precedes the type argument.
1206 utility copes with any argument order, but some other
1208 implementations do not.
1209 .It Sy "missing -width in -tag list, using 8n"
1218 .It Sy "missing utility name, using \(dq\(dq"
1222 macro is called without an argument before
1224 has first been called with an argument.
1225 .It Sy "missing function name, using \(dq\(dq"
1229 macro is called without an argument.
1230 No function name is printed.
1231 .It Sy "empty head in list item"
1243 macro lacks the required argument.
1244 The item head is left empty.
1245 .It Sy "empty list item"
1257 An empty list item is shown.
1258 .It Sy "missing font type, using \efR"
1262 macro has no argument.
1263 It switches to the default font.
1264 .It Sy "unknown font type, using \efR"
1268 argument is invalid.
1269 The default font is used instead.
1270 .It Sy "nothing follows prefix"
1274 macro has no argument, or only one argument and no macro follows
1275 on the same input line.
1276 This defeats its purpose; in particular, spacing is not suppressed
1277 before the text or macros following on the next input line.
1278 .It Sy "empty reference block"
1282 macro is immediately followed by an
1284 macro on the next input line.
1285 Such an empty block does not produce any output.
1286 .It Sy "missing section argument"
1290 macro lacks its second, section number argument.
1291 The first argument, i.e. the name, is printed, but without subsequent
1293 .It Sy "missing -std argument, adding it"
1299 macro lacks the required
1306 even when it is not specified, but other implementations may not.
1307 .It Sy "missing option string, using \(dq\(dq"
1311 macro is invoked without any argument.
1312 An empty pair of square brackets is shown.
1313 .It Sy "missing resource identifier, using \(dq\(dq"
1317 macro is invoked without any argument.
1318 An empty pair of angle brackets is shown.
1319 .It Sy "missing eqn box, using \(dq\(dq"
1321 A diacritic mark or a binary operator is found,
1322 but there is nothing to the left of it.
1323 An empty box is inserted.
1325 .Ss "Warnings related to bad macro arguments"
1327 .It Sy "unterminated quoted argument"
1329 Macro arguments can be enclosed in double quote characters
1330 such that space characters and macro names contained in the quoted
1331 argument need not be escaped.
1332 The closing quote of the last argument of a macro can be omitted.
1333 However, omitting it is not recommended because it makes the code
1335 .It Sy "duplicate argument"
1341 macro has more than one
1348 All but the last instances of these arguments are ignored.
1349 .It Sy "skipping duplicate argument"
1353 macro has more than one
1358 All but the first of these arguments are ignored.
1359 .It Sy "skipping duplicate display type"
1363 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1364 .It Sy "skipping duplicate list type"
1368 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1369 .It Sy "skipping -width argument"
1383 .It Sy "wrong number of cells"
1386 list, the number of tabs or
1388 macros is less than the number expected from the list header line
1389 or exceeds the expected number by more than one.
1390 Missing cells remain empty, and all cells exceeding the number of
1391 columns are joined into one single cell.
1392 .It Sy "unknown AT&T UNIX version"
1396 macro has an invalid argument.
1397 It is used verbatim, with
1400 .It Sy "comma in function argument"
1406 macro contains a comma; it should probably be split into two arguments.
1407 .It Sy "parenthesis in function name"
1409 The first argument of an
1413 macro contains an opening or closing parenthesis; that's probably wrong,
1414 parentheses are added automatically.
1415 .It Sy "unknown library name"
1419 macro has an unknown name argument and will be rendered as
1420 .Qq library Dq Ar name .
1421 .It Sy "invalid content in Rs block"
1425 block contains plain text or non-% macros.
1426 The bogus content is left in the syntax tree.
1427 Formatting may be poor.
1428 .It Sy "invalid Boolean argument"
1432 macro has an argument other than
1436 The invalid argument is moved out of the macro, which leaves the macro
1437 empty, causing it to toggle the spacing mode.
1438 .It Sy "unknown font, skipping request"
1446 layout modifier has an unknown
1449 .It Sy "odd number of characters in request"
1453 request contains an odd number of characters.
1454 The last character is mapped to the blank character.
1456 .Ss "Warnings related to plain text"
1458 .It Sy "blank line in fill mode, using .sp"
1460 The meaning of blank input lines is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1461 In fill mode, line breaks of text input lines are not supposed to be
1463 However, for compatibility with groff, blank lines in fill mode
1467 .It Sy "tab in filled text"
1469 The meaning of tab characters is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1470 In fill mode, whitespace is not supposed to be significant
1471 on text input lines.
1472 As an implementation dependent choice, tab characters on text lines
1473 are passed through to the formatters in any case.
1474 Given that the text before the tab character will be filled,
1475 it is hard to predict which tab stop position the tab will advance to.
1476 .It Sy "whitespace at end of input line"
1477 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1478 Whitespace at the end of input lines is almost never semantically
1479 significant \(em but in the odd case where it might be, it is
1480 extremely confusing when reviewing and maintaining documents.
1481 .It Sy "new sentence, new line"
1483 A new sentence starts in the middle of a text line.
1484 Start it on a new input line to help formatters produce correct spacing.
1485 .It Sy "bad comment style"
1487 Comment lines start with a dot, a backslash, and a double-quote character.
1490 utility treats the line as a comment line even without the backslash,
1491 but leaving out the backslash might not be portable.
1492 .It Sy "invalid escape sequence"
1494 An escape sequence has an invalid opening argument delimiter, lacks the
1495 closing argument delimiter, or the argument has too few characters.
1496 If the argument is incomplete,
1500 expand to an empty string,
1506 to the length of the incomplete argument.
1507 All other invalid escape sequences are ignored.
1508 .It Sy "undefined string, using \(dq\(dq"
1510 If a string is used without being defined before,
1511 its value is implicitly set to the empty string.
1512 However, defining strings explicitly before use
1513 keeps the code more readable.
1515 .Ss "Warnings related to tables"
1517 .It Sy "tbl line starts with span"
1519 The first cell in a table layout line is a horizontal span
1521 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1522 .It Sy "tbl column starts with span"
1524 The first line of a table layout specification
1525 requests a vertical span
1527 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1528 .It Sy "skipping vertical bar in tbl layout"
1530 A table layout specification contains more than two consecutive vertical bars.
1531 A double bar is printed, all additional bars are discarded.
1533 .Ss "Errors related to tables"
1535 .It Sy "non-alphabetic character in tbl options"
1537 The table options line contains a character other than a letter,
1538 blank, or comma where the beginning of an option name is expected.
1539 The character is ignored.
1540 .It Sy "skipping unknown tbl option"
1542 The table options line contains a string of letters that does not
1543 match any known option name.
1544 The word is ignored.
1545 .It Sy "missing tbl option argument"
1547 A table option that requires an argument is not followed by an
1548 opening parenthesis, or the opening parenthesis is immediately
1549 followed by a closing parenthesis.
1550 The option is ignored.
1551 .It Sy "wrong tbl option argument size"
1553 A table option argument contains an invalid number of characters.
1554 Both the option and the argument are ignored.
1555 .It Sy "empty tbl layout"
1557 A table layout specification is completely empty,
1558 specifying zero lines and zero columns.
1559 As a fallback, a single left-justified column is used.
1560 .It Sy "invalid character in tbl layout"
1562 A table layout specification contains a character that can neither
1563 be interpreted as a layout key character nor as a layout modifier,
1564 or a modifier precedes the first key.
1565 The invalid character is discarded.
1566 .It Sy "unmatched parenthesis in tbl layout"
1568 A table layout specification contains an opening parenthesis,
1569 but no matching closing parenthesis.
1570 The rest of the input line, starting from the parenthesis, has no effect.
1571 .It Sy "tbl without any data cells"
1573 A table does not contain any data cells.
1574 It will probably produce no output.
1575 .It Sy "ignoring data in spanned tbl cell"
1577 A table cell is marked as a horizontal span
1581 in the table layout, but it contains data.
1582 The data is ignored.
1583 .It Sy "ignoring extra tbl data cells"
1585 A data line contains more cells than the corresponding layout line.
1586 The data in the extra cells is ignored.
1587 .It Sy "data block open at end of tbl"
1589 A data block is opened with
1591 but never closed with a matching
1593 The remaining data lines of the table are all put into one cell,
1594 and any remaining cells stay empty.
1596 .Ss "Errors related to roff, mdoc, and man code"
1598 .It Sy "input stack limit exceeded, infinite loop?"
1600 Explicit recursion limits are implemented for the following features,
1601 in order to prevent infinite loops:
1604 expansion of nested escape sequences
1605 including expansion of strings and number registers,
1607 expansion of nested user-defined macros,
1613 When a limit is hit, the output is incorrect, typically losing
1614 some content, but the parser can continue.
1615 .It Sy "skipping bad character"
1616 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1617 The input file contains a byte that is not a printable
1620 The message mentions the character number.
1621 The offending byte is replaced with a question mark
1623 Consider editing the input file to replace the byte with an ASCII
1624 transliteration of the intended character.
1625 .It Sy "skipping unknown macro"
1626 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1627 The first identifier on a request or macro line is neither recognized as a
1629 request, nor as a user-defined macro, nor, respectively, as an
1634 It may be mistyped or unsupported.
1635 The request or macro is discarded including its arguments.
1636 .It Sy "skipping insecure request"
1638 An input file attempted to run a shell command
1639 or to read or write an external file.
1640 Such attempts are denied for security reasons.
1641 .It Sy "skipping item outside list"
1645 macro occurs outside any
1650 delimiter occurs outside any pile.
1651 It is discarded including its arguments.
1652 .It Sy "skipping column outside column list"
1656 macro occurs outside any
1659 It is discarded including its arguments.
1660 .It Sy "skipping end of block that is not open"
1661 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1662 Various syntax elements can only be used to explicitly close blocks
1663 that have previously been opened.
1666 block closing macro, a
1673 right delimiter or closing brace, or the end of an equation, table, or
1675 conditional request is encountered but no matching block is open.
1676 The offending request or macro is discarded.
1677 .It Sy "fewer RS blocks open, skipping"
1681 macro is invoked with an argument, but less than the specified number of
1687 .It Sy "inserting missing end of block"
1691 macros as well as tables require explicit closing by dedicated macros.
1692 A block that doesn't support bad nesting
1693 ends before all of its children are properly closed.
1694 The open child nodes are closed implicitly.
1695 .It Sy "appending missing end of block"
1696 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1697 At the end of the document, an explicit
1705 block, an equation, table, or
1707 conditional or ignore block is still open.
1708 The open block is closed implicitly.
1709 .It Sy "escaped character not allowed in a name"
1711 Macro, string and register identifiers consist of printable,
1712 non-whitespace ASCII characters.
1713 Escape sequences and characters and strings expressed in terms of them
1714 cannot form part of a name.
1715 The first argument of an
1723 request, or any argument of an
1725 request, or the name of a request or user defined macro being called,
1726 is terminated by an escape sequence.
1732 the request has no effect at all.
1739 what was parsed up to this point is used as the arguments to the request,
1740 and the rest of the input line is discarded including the escape sequence.
1741 When parsing for a request or a user-defined macro name to be called,
1742 only the escape sequence is discarded.
1743 The characters preceding it are used as the request or macro name,
1744 the characters following it are used as the arguments to the request or macro.
1745 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: Bd -file"
1747 For security reasons, the
1749 macro does not support the
1752 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1753 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1754 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1755 The argument is ignored including the file name following it.
1756 .It Sy "skipping display without arguments"
1760 block macro does not have any arguments.
1761 The block is discarded, and the block content is displayed in
1762 whatever mode was active before the block.
1763 .It Sy "missing list type, using -item"
1767 macro fails to specify the list type.
1768 .It Sy "argument is not numeric, using 1"
1772 request is not a number.
1773 .It Sy "missing manual name, using \(dq\(dq"
1777 or any call in the NAME section, lacks the required argument.
1778 .It Sy "uname(3) system call failed, using UNKNOWN"
1782 macro is called without arguments, and the
1787 can be compiled with
1789 .Fl D Cm OSNAME=\(dq\e\(dq Ar string Cm \e\(dq\(dq .
1791 .It Sy "unknown standard specifier"
1795 macro has an unknown argument and is discarded.
1796 .It Sy "skipping request without numeric argument"
1805 statement has a non-numeric or negative argument or no argument at all.
1806 The invalid request or statement is ignored.
1807 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: .so with absolute path or \(dq..\(dq"
1809 For security reasons,
1813 file inclusion requests only with relative paths
1814 and only without ascending to any parent directory.
1815 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1816 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1817 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1819 only shows the path as it appears behind
1821 .It Sy ".so request failed"
1825 request requires reading an external file, but the file could not be
1828 only shows the path as it appears behind
1830 .It Sy "skipping all arguments"
1831 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , roff
1847 macro in a list that don't support item heads, a
1866 block closing request is invoked with at least one argument.
1867 All arguments are ignored.
1868 .It Sy "skipping excess arguments"
1869 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1870 A macro or request is invoked with too many arguments:
1871 .Bl -dash -offset 2n -width 2n -compact
1880 with more than one argument
1883 with another argument after
1889 with more than one argument or with a non-integer argument
1894 family with more than two arguments
1897 with more than three arguments
1900 with more than five arguments
1906 with invalid arguments
1908 The excess arguments are ignored.
1910 .Ss Unsupported features
1912 .It Sy "input too large"
1916 cannot handle input files larger than its arbitrary size limit
1917 of 2^31 bytes (2 Gigabytes).
1918 Since useful manuals are always small, this is not a problem in practice.
1919 Parsing is aborted as soon as the condition is detected.
1920 .It Sy "unsupported control character"
1922 An ASCII control character supported by other
1924 implementations but not by
1926 was found in an input file.
1927 It is replaced by a question mark.
1928 .It Sy "unsupported roff request"
1930 An input file contains a
1932 request supported by GNU troff or Heirloom troff but not by
1934 and it is likely that this will cause information loss
1935 or considerable misformatting.
1936 .It Sy "eqn delim option in tbl"
1938 The options line of a table defines equation delimiters.
1939 Any equation source code contained in the table will be printed unformatted.
1940 .It Sy "unsupported table layout modifier"
1942 A table layout specification contains an
1945 The modifier is discarded.
1946 .It Sy "ignoring macro in table"
1947 .Pq tbl , mdoc , man
1948 A table contains an invocation of an
1952 macro or of an undefined macro.
1953 The macro is ignored, and its arguments are handled
1954 as if they were a text line.
1968 utility first appeared in
1982 utility was written by
1983 .An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv
1984 and is maintained by
1985 .An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org .
git.ckatri.com / mandoc.git / blob