1 .\" $Id: mandoc.1,v 1.146 2015/02/06 03:38:45 schwarze Exp $
3 .\" Copyright (c) 2009, 2010, 2011 Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv>
4 .\" Copyright (c) 2012, 2014, 2015 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: February 6 2015 $
23 .Nd format and display UNIX manuals
28 .Op Fl I Cm os Li = Ar name
30 .Op Fl K Ns Ar encoding
41 manual pages for display.
49 text from stdin, implying
55 The options are as follows:
58 If the standard output is a terminal device and
62 to paginate the output, just like
66 Copy the formatted manual pages to the standard output without using
70 It can be specified to override
75 This overrides any earlier
81 .It Fl I Cm os Li = Ar name
83 Override the default operating system
93 Display only the SYNOPSIS lines.
96 .It Fl K Ns Ar encoding
97 Specify the input encoding.
105 If not specified, autodetection uses the first match:
106 .Bl -tag -width iso-8859-1
108 if the first three bytes of the input file
109 are the UTF-8 byte order mark (BOM, 0xefbbbf)
111 if the first or second line of the input file matches the
115 .D1 .\e" -*- Oo ...; Oc coding: Ar encoding ; No -*-
117 if the first non-ASCII byte in the file introduces a valid UTF-8 sequence
124 This overrides any earlier
132 Also reverts any earlier
137 .It Fl m Ns Ar format
141 for available formats.
144 .It Fl O Ns Ar option
145 Comma-separated output options.
146 .It Fl T Ns Ar output
150 for available formats.
154 Print version and exit.
156 Specify the minimum message
158 to be reported on the standard error output and to affect the exit status.
182 to exit after parsing a file that causes warnings or errors of at least
184 No formatted output will be produced from that file.
189 are requested, they can be joined with a comma, for example
190 .Fl W Ns Cm error , Ns Cm stop .
192 Read input from zero or more files.
193 If unspecified, reads from stdin.
194 If multiple files are specified,
196 will halt with the first failed parse.
205 also supports the options
228 should only be used for legacy manuals.
232 which is also the default, determines encoding on-the-fly: if the first
239 parser is used; otherwise, the
244 files are specified with
246 each has its file-type determined this way.
247 If multiple files are
252 is specified, then this format is used exclusively.
256 utility accepts the following
258 arguments, which correspond to output modes:
259 .Bl -tag -width "-Tlocale"
261 Produce 7-bit ASCII output.
265 Produce HTML5, CSS1, and MathML output.
269 Parse only: produce no output.
271 .Fl W Ns Cm warning .
272 .It Fl T Ns Cm locale
273 Encode output using the current locale.
288 Produce PostScript output.
290 .Sx PostScript Output .
292 Produce an indented parse tree.
294 Encode output in the UTF\-8 multi-byte format.
298 This is a synonym for
302 If multiple input files are specified, these will be processed by the
303 corresponding filter in-order.
307 is rendered in standard 7-bit ASCII documented in
310 Font styles are applied by using back-spaced encoding such that an
314 .Sq _ Ns \e[bs] Ns c ,
317 is the back-space character number 8.
318 Emboldened characters are rendered as
319 .Sq c Ns \e[bs] Ns c .
321 The special characters documented in
323 are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent.
325 Output width is limited to 78 visible columns unless literal input lines
330 arguments are accepted:
332 .It Cm indent Ns = Ns Ar indent
333 The left margin for normal text is set to
335 blank characters instead of the default of five for
339 Increasing this is not recommended; it may result in degraded formatting,
340 for example overfull lines or ugly line breaks.
341 .It Cm width Ns = Ns Ar width
342 The output width is set to
344 which will normalise to \(>=58.
349 conforms to HTML5 using optional self-closing tags.
350 Default styles use only CSS1.
351 Equations rendered from
356 .Pa example.style.css
357 file documents style-sheet classes available for customising output.
358 If a style-sheet is not specified with
361 defaults to simple output (via an embedded style-sheet)
362 readable in any graphical or text-based web
365 Special characters are rendered in decimal-encoded UTF\-8.
369 arguments are accepted:
372 Omit the <!DOCTYPE> declaration and the <html>, <head>, and <body>
373 elements and only emit the subtree below the <body> element.
376 argument will be ignored.
377 This is useful when embedding manual content within existing documents.
378 .It Cm includes Ns = Ns Ar fmt
383 is used as a template for linked header files (usually via the
388 are replaced with the include filename.
389 The default is not to present a
391 .It Cm man Ns = Ns Ar fmt
395 .Ar ../html%S/%N.%S.html ,
396 is used as a template for linked manuals (usually via the
403 are replaced with the linked manual's name and section, respectively.
404 If no section is included, section 1 is assumed.
405 The default is not to
407 .It Cm style Ns = Ns Ar style.css
410 is used for an external style-sheet.
411 This must be a valid absolute or
415 Locale-depending output encoding is triggered with
419 This option is not available on all systems: systems without locale
420 support, or those whose internal representation is not natively UCS-4,
425 for font style specification and available command-line arguments.
427 Translate input format into
430 This is useful for distributing manual sources to legacy systems
437 is passed as input, it is translated into
439 If the input format is
441 the input is copied to the output, expanding any
445 The parser is also run, and as usual, the
449 are displayed before copying the input to the output.
451 PDF-1.1 output may be generated by
454 .Sx PostScript Output
457 arguments and defaults.
458 .Ss PostScript Output
461 Level-2 pages may be generated by
463 Output pages default to letter sized and are rendered in the Times font
465 Margins are calculated as 1/9 the page length and width.
468 Special characters are rendered as in
473 arguments are accepted:
475 .It Cm paper Ns = Ns Ar name
485 You may also manually specify dimensions as
487 width by height in millimetres.
488 If an unknown value is encountered,
495 to force a UTF\-8 locale.
498 for details and options.
500 .Bl -tag -width MANPAGER
502 Any non-empty value of the environment variable
504 will be used instead of the standard pagination program,
507 Specifies the pagination program to use when
510 If neither PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined,
511 .Pa /usr/bin/more Fl s
517 utility exits with one of the following values, controlled by the message
523 .Bl -tag -width Ds -compact
525 No warnings or errors occurred, or those that did were ignored because
526 they were lower than the requested
529 At least one warning occurred, but no error, and
533 At least one parsing error occurred,
534 but no unsupported feature was encountered, and
540 At least one unsupported feature was encountered, and
547 Invalid command line arguments were specified.
548 No input files have been read.
550 An operating system error occurred, for example exhaustion
551 of memory, file descriptors, or process table entries.
554 to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file.
560 .Fl W Ns Cm warning .
562 To page manuals to the terminal:
564 .Dl $ mandoc \-Wall,stop mandoc.1 2\*(Gt&1 | less
565 .Dl $ mandoc mandoc.1 mdoc.3 mdoc.7 | less
567 To produce HTML manuals with
571 .Dl $ mandoc \-Thtml -Ostyle=style.css mdoc.7 \*(Gt mdoc.7.html
573 To check over a large set of manuals:
575 .Dl $ mandoc \-Tlint `find /usr/src -name \e*\e.[1-9]`
577 To produce a series of PostScript manuals for A4 paper:
579 .Dl $ mandoc \-Tps \-Opaper=a4 mdoc.7 man.7 \*(Gt manuals.ps
585 format, for use on systems lacking an
589 .Dl $ mandoc \-Tman foo.mdoc \*(Gt foo.man
591 Messages displayed by
595 .D1 Nm Ns : Ar file : Ns Ar line : Ns Ar column : level : message : macro args
597 Line and column numbers start at 1.
598 Both are omitted for messages referring to an input file as a whole.
599 Macro names and arguments are omitted where meaningless.
600 Fatal messages about invalid command line arguments
601 or operating system errors, for example when memory is exhausted,
608 Message levels have the following meanings:
609 .Bl -tag -width "warning"
611 An input file uses unsupported low-level
614 The output may be incomplete and/or misformatted,
615 so using GNU troff instead of
617 to process the file may be preferable.
619 An input file contains invalid syntax that cannot be safely interpreted.
620 By discarding part of the input or inserting missing tokens,
621 the parser is able to continue, and the error does not prevent
622 generation of formatted output, but typically, preparing that
623 output involves information loss, broken document structure
624 or unintended formatting, no matter whether
626 or GNU troff is used.
627 In many cases, the output of
629 and GNU troff is identical, but in some,
631 is more resilient than GNU troff with respect to malformed input.
633 Non-existent or unreadable input files are also reported on the
636 In that case, the parser cannot even be started and no output
637 is produced from those input files.
639 An input file uses obsolete, discouraged or non-portable syntax.
640 All the same, the meaning of the input is unambiguous and a correct
641 rendering can be produced.
642 Documents causing warnings may render poorly when using other
643 formatting tools instead of
652 levels except those about non-existent or unreadable input files
653 are hidden unless their level, or a lower level, is requested using a
658 .Ss Warnings related to the document prologue
660 .It Sy "missing manual title, using UNTITLED"
664 macro has no arguments, or there is no
666 macro before the first non-prologue macro.
667 .It Sy "missing manual title, using \(dq\(dq"
671 macro, or it has no arguments.
672 .It Sy "lower case character in document title"
674 The title is still used as given in the
679 .It Sy "missing manual section, using \(dq\(dq"
685 macro lacks the mandatory section argument.
686 .It Sy "unknown manual section"
688 The section number in a
690 line is invalid, but still used.
691 .It Sy "missing date, using today's date"
693 The document was parsed as
699 macro has no arguments or only empty arguments;
700 or the document was parsed as
706 macro has less than three arguments or its third argument is empty.
707 .It Sy "cannot parse date, using it verbatim"
713 macro does not follow the conventional format.
714 .It Sy "missing Os macro, using \(dq\(dq"
716 The default or current system is not shown in this case.
717 .It Sy "duplicate prologue macro"
719 One of the prologue macros occurs more than once.
720 The last instance overrides all previous ones.
721 .It Sy "late prologue macro"
727 macro occurs after some non-prologue macro, but still takes effect.
728 .It Sy "skipping late title macro"
732 macro can only occur before the first non-prologue macro
733 because traditional formatters write the page header
734 before parsing the document body.
735 Even though this technical restriction does not apply to
737 traditional semantics is preserved.
738 The late macro is discarded including its arguments.
739 .It Sy "prologue macros out of order"
741 The prologue macros are not given in the conventional order
745 All three macros are used even when given in another order.
747 .Ss Warnings regarding document structure
749 .It Sy ".so is fragile, better use ln(1)"
751 Including files only works when the parser program runs with the correct
752 current working directory.
753 .It Sy "no document body"
755 The document body contains neither text nor macros.
756 An empty document is shown, consisting only of a header and a footer line.
757 .It Sy "content before first section header"
759 Some macros or text precede the first
764 The offending macros and text are parsed and added to the top level
765 of the syntax tree, outside any section block.
766 .It Sy "first section is not NAME"
768 The argument of the first
776 .It Sy "bad NAME section contents"
778 The last node in the NAME section is not an
780 macro, or any preceding macro is not
782 or the NAME section is completely empty.
787 .It Sy "missing description line, using \(dq\(dq"
791 macro lacks the required argument.
792 The title line of the manual will end after the dash.
793 .It Sy "sections out of conventional order"
795 A standard section occurs after another section it usually precedes.
796 All section titles are used as given,
797 and the order of sections is not changed.
798 .It Sy "duplicate section title"
800 The same standard section title occurs more than once.
801 .It Sy "unexpected section"
803 A standard section header occurs in a section of the manual
804 where it normally isn't useful.
805 .It Sy "unusual Xr order"
807 In the SEE ALSO section, an
809 macro with a lower section number follows one with a higher number,
812 macros refering to the same section are out of alphabetical order.
813 .It Sy "unusual Xr punctuation"
815 In the SEE ALSO section, punctuation between two
817 macros differs from a single comma, or there is trailing punctuation
821 .It Sy "AUTHORS section without An macro"
823 An AUTHORS sections contains no
825 macros, or only empty ones.
826 Probably, there are author names lacking markup.
828 .Ss "Warnings related to macros and nesting"
830 .It Sy "obsolete macro"
834 manual for replacements.
835 .It Sy "macro neither callable nor escaped"
837 The name of a macro that is not callable appears on a macro line.
838 It is printed verbatim.
839 If the intention is to call it, move it to its own line;
840 otherwise, escape it by prepending
842 .It Sy "skipping paragraph macro"
845 documents, this happens
848 at the beginning and end of sections and subsections
850 right before non-compact lists and displays
852 at the end of items in non-column, non-compact lists
854 and for multiple consecutive paragraph macros.
858 documents, it happens
870 macros having neither head nor body arguments
881 .It Sy "moving paragraph macro out of list"
885 list contains a trailing paragraph macro.
886 The paragraph macro is moved after the end of the list.
887 .It Sy "skipping no-space macro"
889 An input line begins with an
892 The macro is ignored.
893 .It Sy "blocks badly nested"
895 If two blocks intersect, one should completely contain the other.
896 Otherwise, rendered output is likely to look strange in any output
897 format, and rendering in SGML-based output formats is likely to be
898 outright wrong because such languages do not support badly nested
900 Typical examples of badly nested blocks are
901 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bo \&Ac \&Bc
903 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bq \&Ac .
911 .It Sy "nested displays are not portable"
918 display occurs nested inside another
923 but fails with most other implementations.
924 .It Sy "moving content out of list"
928 list block contains text or macros before the first
931 The offending children are moved before the beginning of the list.
932 .It Sy ".Vt block has child macro"
936 macro supports plain text arguments only.
937 Formatting may be ugly and semantic searching
938 for the affected content might not work.
939 .It Sy "fill mode already enabled, skipping"
943 request occurs even though the document is still in fill mode,
944 or already switched back to fill mode.
946 .It Sy "fill mode already disabled, skipping"
950 request occurs even though the document already switched to no-fill mode
951 and did not switch back to fill mode yet.
953 .It Sy "line scope broken"
955 While parsing the next-line scope of the previous macro,
956 another macro is found that prematurely terminates the previous one.
957 The previous, interrupted macro is deleted from the parse tree.
959 .Ss "Warnings related to missing arguments"
961 .It Sy "skipping empty request"
963 The macro name is missing from a macro definition request,
966 control statement or operation keyword lacks its required argument.
967 .It Sy "conditional request controls empty scope"
969 A conditional request is only useful if any of the following
970 follows it on the same logical input line:
975 keyword to open a multi-line scope.
977 A request or macro or some text, resulting in a single-line scope.
979 The immediate end of the logical line without any intervening whitespace,
980 resulting in next-line scope.
982 Here, a conditional request is followed by trailing whitespace only,
983 and there is no other content on its logical input line.
984 Note that it doesn't matter whether the logical input line is split
985 across multiple physical input lines using
987 line continuation characters.
988 This is one of the rare cases
989 where trailing whitespace is syntactically significant.
990 The conditional request controls a scope containing whitespace only,
991 so it is unlikely to have a significant effect,
992 except that it may control a following
995 .It Sy "skipping empty macro"
997 The indicated macro has no arguments or no body content
999 .It Sy "empty argument, using 0n"
1001 The required width is missing after
1008 .It Sy "argument count wrong"
1010 The indicated macro has too few or too many arguments.
1011 The syntax tree will contain the wrong number of arguments as given.
1012 Formatting behaviour depends on the specific macro in question.
1013 Note that the same message may also occur as an ERROR, see below.
1014 .It Sy "missing display type, using -ragged"
1018 macro is invoked without the required display type.
1019 .It Sy "list type is not the first argument"
1023 macro, at least one other argument precedes the type argument.
1026 utility copes with any argument order, but some other
1028 implementations do not.
1029 .It Sy "missing -width in -tag list, using 8n"
1038 .It Sy "missing utility name, using \(dq\(dq"
1042 macro is called without an argument before
1044 has first been called with an argument.
1045 .It Sy "missing function name, using \(dq\(dq"
1049 macro is called without an argument.
1050 No function name is printed.
1051 .It Sy "empty head in list item"
1063 macro lacks the required argument.
1064 The item head is left empty.
1065 .It Sy "empty list item"
1077 An empty list item is shown.
1078 .It Sy "missing font type"
1082 macro has no argument.
1083 It switches to the default font,
1085 .It Sy "unknown font type"
1089 argument is invalid.
1093 .It Sy "nothing follows prefix"
1097 macro has no argument, or only one argument and no macro follows
1098 on the same input line.
1099 This defeats its purpose; in particular, spacing is not suppressed
1100 before the text or macros following on the next input line.
1101 .It Sy "empty reference block"
1105 macro is immediately followed by an
1107 macro on the next input line.
1108 Such an empty block does not produce any output.
1109 .It Sy "missing -std argument, adding it"
1115 macro lacks the required
1122 even when it is not specified, but other implementations may not.
1123 .It Sy "missing eqn box, using \(dq\(dq"
1125 A diacritic mark or a binary operator is found,
1126 but there is nothing to the left of it.
1127 An empty box is inserted.
1129 .Ss "Warnings related to bad macro arguments"
1131 .It Sy "unterminated quoted argument"
1133 Macro arguments can be enclosed in double quote characters
1134 such that space characters and macro names contained in the quoted
1135 argument need not be escaped.
1136 The closing quote of the last argument of a macro can be omitted.
1137 However, omitting it is not recommended because it makes the code
1139 .It Sy "duplicate argument"
1145 macro has more than one
1152 All but the last instances of these arguments are ignored.
1153 .It Sy "skipping duplicate argument"
1157 macro has more than one
1162 All but the first of these arguments are ignored.
1163 .It Sy "skipping duplicate display type"
1167 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1168 .It Sy "skipping duplicate list type"
1172 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1173 .It Sy "skipping -width argument"
1187 .It Sy "unknown AT&T UNIX version"
1191 macro has an invalid argument.
1192 It is used verbatim, with
1195 .It Sy "comma in function argument"
1201 macro contains a comma; it should probably be split into two arguments.
1202 .It Sy "parenthesis in function name"
1204 The first argument of an
1208 macro contains an opening or closing parenthesis; that's probably wrong,
1209 parentheses are added automatically.
1210 .It Sy "invalid content in Rs block"
1214 block contains plain text or non-% macros.
1215 The bogus content is left in the syntax tree.
1216 Formatting may be poor.
1217 .It Sy "invalid Boolean argument"
1221 macro has an argument other than
1225 The invalid argument is moved out of the macro, which leaves the macro
1226 empty, causing it to toggle the spacing mode.
1227 .It Sy "unknown font, skipping request"
1235 layout modifier has an unknown
1239 .Ss "Warnings related to plain text"
1241 .It Sy "blank line in fill mode, using .sp"
1243 The meaning of blank input lines is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1244 In fill mode, line breaks of text input lines are not supposed to be
1246 However, for compatibility with groff, blank lines in fill mode
1250 .It Sy "tab in filled text"
1252 The meaning of tab characters is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1253 In fill mode, whitespace is not supposed to be significant
1254 on text input lines.
1255 As an implementation dependent choice, tab characters on text lines
1256 are passed through to the formatters in any case.
1257 Given that the text before the tab character will be filled,
1258 it is hard to predict which tab stop position the tab will advance to.
1259 .It Sy "whitespace at end of input line"
1260 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1261 Whitespace at the end of input lines is almost never semantically
1262 significant \(em but in the odd case where it might be, it is
1263 extremely confusing when reviewing and maintaining documents.
1264 .It Sy "bad comment style"
1266 Comment lines start with a dot, a backslash, and a double-quote character.
1269 utility treats the line as a comment line even without the backslash,
1270 but leaving out the backslash might not be portable.
1271 .It Sy "invalid escape sequence"
1273 An escape sequence has an invalid opening argument delimiter, lacks the
1274 closing argument delimiter, or the argument has too few characters.
1275 If the argument is incomplete,
1279 expand to an empty string,
1285 to the length of the incomplete argument.
1286 All other invalid escape sequences are ignored.
1287 .It Sy "undefined string, using \(dq\(dq"
1289 If a string is used without being defined before,
1290 its value is implicitly set to the empty string.
1291 However, defining strings explicitly before use
1292 keeps the code more readable.
1294 .Ss "Warnings related to tables"
1296 .It Sy "tbl line starts with span"
1298 The first cell in a table layout line is a horizontal span
1300 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1301 .It Sy "tbl column starts with span"
1303 The first line of a table layout specification
1304 requests a vertical span
1306 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1307 .It Sy "skipping vertical bar in tbl layout"
1309 A table layout specification contains more than two consecutive vertical bars.
1310 A double bar is printed, all additional bars are discarded.
1312 .Ss "Errors related to tables"
1314 .It Sy "non-alphabetic character in tbl options"
1316 The table options line contains a character other than a letter,
1317 blank, or comma where the beginning of an option name is expected.
1318 The character is ignored.
1319 .It Sy "skipping unknown tbl option"
1321 The table options line contains a string of letters that does not
1322 match any known option name.
1323 The word is ignored.
1324 .It Sy "missing tbl option argument"
1326 A table option that requires an argument is not followed by an
1327 opening parenthesis, or the opening parenthesis is immediately
1328 followed by a closing parenthesis.
1329 The option is ignored.
1330 .It Sy "wrong tbl option argument size"
1332 A table option argument contains an invalid number of characters.
1333 Both the option and the argument are ignored.
1334 .It Sy "empty tbl layout"
1336 A table layout specification is completely empty,
1337 specifying zero lines and zero columns.
1338 As a fallback, a single left-justified column is used.
1339 .It Sy "invalid character in tbl layout"
1341 A table layout specification contains a character that can neither
1342 be interpreted as a layout key character nor as a layout modifier,
1343 or a modifier precedes the first key.
1344 The invalid character is discarded.
1345 .It Sy "unmatched parenthesis in tbl layout"
1347 A table layout specification contains an opening parenthesis,
1348 but no matching closing parenthesis.
1349 The rest of the input line, starting from the parenthesis, has no effect.
1350 .It Sy "tbl without any data cells"
1352 A table does not contain any data cells.
1353 It will probably produce no output.
1354 .It Sy "ignoring data in spanned tbl cell"
1356 A table cell is marked as a horizontal span
1360 in the table layout, but it contains data.
1361 The data is ignored.
1362 .It Sy "ignoring extra tbl data cells"
1364 A data line contains more cells than the corresponding layout line.
1365 The data in the extra cells is ignored.
1366 .It Sy "data block open at end of tbl"
1368 A data block is opened with
1370 but never closed with a matching
1372 The remaining data lines of the table are all put into one cell,
1373 and any remaining cells stay empty.
1375 .Ss "Errors related to roff, mdoc, and man code"
1377 .It Sy "input stack limit exceeded, infinite loop?"
1379 Explicit recursion limits are implemented for the following features,
1380 in order to prevent infinite loops:
1383 expansion of nested escape sequences
1384 including expansion of strings and number registers,
1386 expansion of nested user-defined macros,
1392 When a limit is hit, the output is incorrect, typically losing
1393 some content, but the parser can continue.
1394 .It Sy "skipping bad character"
1395 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1396 The input file contains a byte that is not a printable
1399 The message mentions the character number.
1400 The offending byte is replaced with a question mark
1402 Consider editing the input file to replace the byte with an ASCII
1403 transliteration of the intended character.
1404 .It Sy "skipping unknown macro"
1405 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1406 The first identifier on a request or macro line is neither recognized as a
1408 request, nor as a user-defined macro, nor, respectively, as an
1413 It may be mistyped or unsupported.
1414 The request or macro is discarded including its arguments.
1415 .It Sy "skipping insecure request"
1417 An input file attempted to run a shell command
1418 or to read or write an external file.
1419 Such attempts are denied for security reasons.
1420 .It Sy "skipping item outside list"
1424 macro occurs outside any
1429 delimiter occurs outside any pile.
1430 It is discarded including its arguments.
1431 .It Sy "skipping column outside column list"
1435 macro occurs outside any
1438 It is discarded including its arguments.
1439 .It Sy "skipping end of block that is not open"
1440 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1441 Various syntax elements can only be used to explicitly close blocks
1442 that have previously been opened.
1445 block closing macro, a
1452 right delimiter or closing brace, or the end of an equation, table, or
1454 conditional request is encountered but no matching block is open.
1455 The offending request or macro is discarded.
1456 .It Sy "fewer RS blocks open, skipping"
1460 macro is invoked with an argument, but less than the specified number of
1466 .It Sy "inserting missing end of block"
1470 macros as well as tables require explicit closing by dedicated macros.
1471 A block that doesn't support bad nesting
1472 ends before all of its children are properly closed.
1473 The open child nodes are closed implicitly.
1474 .It Sy "scope open on exit"
1475 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1476 At the end of the document, an explicit
1484 block, an equation, table, or
1486 conditional or ignore block is still open.
1487 The open block is closed implicitly.
1488 .It Sy "escaped character not allowed in a name"
1490 Macro, string and register identifiers consist of printable,
1491 non-whitespace ASCII characters.
1492 Escape sequences and characters and strings expressed in terms of them
1493 cannot form part of a name.
1494 The first argument of an
1502 request, or any argument of an
1504 request, or the name of a request or user defined macro being called,
1505 is terminated by an escape sequence.
1511 the request has no effect at all.
1518 what was parsed up to this point is used as the arguments to the request,
1519 and the rest of the input line is discarded including the escape sequence.
1520 When parsing for a request or a user-defined macro name to be called,
1521 only the escape sequence is discarded.
1522 The characters preceding it are used as the request or macro name,
1523 the characters following it are used as the arguments to the request or macro.
1524 .It Sy "argument count wrong"
1525 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1526 The indicated request or macro has too few or too many arguments.
1527 The syntax tree will contain the wrong number of arguments as given.
1528 Formatting behaviour depends on the specific request or macro in question.
1529 Note that the same message may also occur as a WARNING, see above.
1530 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: Bd -file"
1532 For security reasons, the
1534 macro does not support the
1537 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1538 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1539 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1540 The argument is ignored including the file name following it.
1541 .It Sy "missing list type, using -item"
1545 macro fails to specify the list type.
1546 .It Sy "missing manual name, using \(dq\(dq"
1550 lacks the required argument.
1551 .It Sy "uname(3) system call failed, using UNKNOWN"
1555 macro is called without arguments, and the
1560 can be compiled with
1562 .Fl D Cm OSNAME=\(dq\e\(dq Ar string Cm \e\(dq\(dq .
1564 .It Sy "unknown standard specifier"
1568 macro has an unknown argument and is discarded.
1569 .It Sy "skipping request without numeric argument"
1578 statement has a non-numeric or negative argument or no argument at all.
1579 The invalid request or statement is ignored.
1580 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: .so with absolute path or \(dq..\(dq"
1582 For security reasons,
1586 file inclusion requests only with relative paths
1587 and only without ascending to any parent directory.
1588 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1589 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1590 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1592 only shows the path as it appears behind
1594 .It Sy ".so request failed"
1598 request requires reading an external file, but the file could not be
1601 only shows the path as it appears behind
1603 .It Sy "skipping all arguments"
1604 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , roff
1620 macro in a list that don't support item heads, a
1636 block closing request is invoked with at least one argument.
1637 All arguments are ignored.
1638 .It Sy "skipping excess arguments"
1639 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1642 macro is invoked with another argument after
1647 is invoked with more than one argument,
1652 are invoked with invalid arguments, the
1654 macro is invoked with more than one argument
1655 or with a non-integer argument, the
1657 request is invoked with more than one argument, or a request of the
1659 family is invoked with more than two arguments.
1660 The excess arguments are ignored.
1662 .Ss Unsupported features
1664 .It Sy "input too large"
1668 cannot handle input files larger than its arbitrary size limit
1669 of 2^31 bytes (2 Gigabytes).
1670 Since useful manuals are always small, this is not a problem in practice.
1671 Parsing is aborted as soon as the condition is detected.
1672 .It Sy "unsupported control character"
1674 An ASCII control character supported by other
1676 implementations but not by
1678 was found in an input file.
1679 It is replaced by a question mark.
1680 .It Sy "unsupported roff request"
1682 An input file contains a
1684 request supported by GNU troff or Heirloom troff but not by
1686 and it is likely that this will cause information loss
1687 or considerable misformatting.
1688 .It Sy "eqn delim option in tbl"
1690 The options line of a table defines equation delimiters.
1691 Any equation source code contained in the table will be printed unformatted.
1692 .It Sy "unsupported table layout modifier"
1694 A table layout specification contains an
1697 The modifier is discarded.
1698 .It Sy "ignoring macro in table"
1699 .Pq tbl , mdoc , man
1700 A table contains an invocation of an
1704 macro or of an undefined macro.
1705 The macro is ignored, and its arguments are handled
1706 as if they were a text line.
1720 utility was written by
1721 .An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv
1722 and is maintained by
1723 .An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org .
1727 the maximum size of an element attribute is determined by
1729 which is usually 1024 bytes.
1730 Be aware of this when setting long link
1732 .Fl O Ns Cm style Ns = Ns Ar really/long/link .