NEWS

   1 $Id: NEWS,v 1.4 2013/12/31 11:28:20 schwarze Exp $
   2
   3 This file lists the most important changes in the mdocml.bsd.lv distribution.
   4
   5 Changes in version 1.12.3, released on December 31, 2013
   6
   7  * In the mdoc(7) SYNOPSIS, line breaks and hanging indentation
   8    now work correctly for .Fo/.Fa/.Fc and .Fn blocks.
   9    Thanks to Franco Fichtner for doing part of the work.
  10  * The mdoc(7) .Bk macro got some addititonal bugfixes.
  11  * In mdoc(7) macro arguments, double quotes can now be quoted
  12    by doubling them, just like in man(7).
  13    Thanks to Tsugutomo ENAMI for the patch.
  14  * At the end of man(7) macro lines, end-of-sentence spacing
  15    now works.  Thanks to Franco Fichtner for the patch.
  16  * For backward compatibility, the man(7) parser now supports the
  17    man-ext .UR/.UE (uniform resource identifier) block macros.
  18  * The man(7) parser now handles closing blocks that are not open
  19    more gracefully.
  20  * The man(7) parser now ignores blank lines right after .SH and .SS.
  21  * In the man(7) formatter, reset indentation when leaving a block,
  22    not just when entering the next one.
  23  * The roff(7) .nr request now supports incrementing and decrementing
  24    number registers and stops parsing the number right before the
  25    first non-digit character.
  26  * The roff(7) parser now supports the alternative escape sequence
  27    syntax \C'uXXXX' for Unicode characters.
  28  * The roff(7) parser now parses and ignores the .fam (font family)
  29    and .hw (hyphenation points) requests and the \d and \u escape
  30    sequences.
  31  * The roff(7) manual got a new ESCAPE SEQUENCE REFERENCE.
  32
  33 Changes in version 1.12.2, released on Oktober 5, 2013
  34
  35  * The mdoc(7) to man(7) converter, to be called as mandoc -Tman,
  36    is now fully functional.
  37  * The mandoc(1) utility now supports the -Ios (default operating system)
  38    input option, and the -Tutf8 output mode now actually works.
  39  * The mandocdb(8) utility no longer truncates existing databases when
  40    starting to build new ones, but only replaces them when the build
  41    actually succeeds.
  42  * The man(7) parser now supports the PD macro (paragraph distance),
  43    and (for GNU man-ext compatibility only) EX (example block) and EE
  44    (example end).  Plus several bugfixes regarding indentation, line
  45    breaks, and vertical spacing, and regarding RS following TP.
  46  * The roff(7) parser now supports the \f(BI (bold+italic) font escape,
  47    the \z (zero cursor advance) escape and the cc (change control
  48    character) and it (input line trap) requests. Plus bugfixes regarding
  49    the \t (tab) escape, nested escape sequences, and conditional requests.
  50  * In mdoc(7), several bugs were fixed related to UTF-8 output of quoting
  51    enclosures, delimiter handling, list indentation and horizontal and
  52    vertical spacing, formatting of the Lk, %U, and %C macros, plus some
  53    bugfixes related to the handling of syntax errors like badly nested
  54    font blocks, stray Ta macros outside column lists, unterminated It Xo
  55    blocks, and non-text children of Nm blocks.
  56  * In tbl(7), the width of horizontal spans and the vertical spacing
  57    around tables was corrected, and in man(7) files, a crash was fixed
  58    that was triggered by some particular unclosed T{ macros.
  59  * For mandoc developers, we now provide a tbl(3) library manual and
  60    gmdiff, a very small, very simplistic groff-versus-mandoc output
  61    comparison tool.
  62  * Provide this NEWS file.
  63
  64 Changes in version 1.12.1, released on March 23, 2012
  65
  66  * Significant work on apropos(1) and mandocdb(8). These tools are now
  67    much more robust.  A whatis(1) implementation is now handled as an
  68    apropos(1) mode.  These tools are also able to minimally handle
  69    pre-formatted pages, that is, those already formatted by another
  70    utility such as GNU troff.
  71  * The man.cgi(7) script is also now available for wider testing.
  72    It interfaces with mandocdb(8) manuals cached by catman(8).
  73    HTML output is generated on-the-fly by libmandoc or internal
  74    methods to convert pre-formatted pages.
  75  * The mailing list archive for the discuss and tech lists are being
  76    hosted by Gmane at gmane.comp.tools.mdocml.user and
  77    gmane.comp.tools.mdocml.devel, respectively.
  78
  79 Changes in version 1.12.0, released on October 8, 2011
  80
  81  * This version features a new, work-in-progress mandoc(1) output mode:
  82    -Tman.  This mode allows a system maintainer to distribute man(7)
  83    media for older systems that may not natively support mdoc(7), such
  84    as old Solaris systems.
  85  * The -Ofragment option was added to mandoc(1)'s -Thtml and -Txhtml modes.
  86  * While adding features, an apropos(1) utility has been merged from the
  87    mandoc-tools sandbox.  This interfaces with mandocdb(8) for semantic
  88    search of manual content.  apropos(1) is different from the traditional
  89    apropos primarily in allowing keyword search (such as for functions,
  90    utilities, etc.) and regular expressions.  Note that the calling
  91    syntax for apropos is likely to change as it settles down.
  92  * In documentation news, the mdoc(7) and man(7) manuals have been
  93    made considerably more readable by adding MACRO OVERVIEW sections, by
  94    moving the gory details of the LANGUAGE SYNTAX to the roff(7) manual,
  95    and by moving the very technical MACRO SYNTAX sections down to the
  96    bottom of the page.
  97  * Furthermore, for tbl(7), the -Tascii mode horizontal spacing of tables
  98    was rewritten completely.  It is now compatible with groff(1), both
  99    with and without frames and rulers.
 100  * Nesting of indented blocks is now supported in man(7), and several
 101    bugs were fixed regarding indentation and alignment.
 102  * The page headers in mdoc(7) are now nicer for very long titles.
 103
 104 Changes in version 1.11.7, released on September 2, 2011
 105
 106  * Added demandoc(1) utility for stripping away macros and escapes.
 107    This replaces the historical deroff(1) utility.
 108  * Also improved the mdoc(7) and man(7) manuals.
 109
 110 Changes in version 1.11.6, released on August 16, 2011
 111
 112  * Handling of tr macro in roff(7) implemented.  This makes Perl
 113    documentation much more readable.  Hyphenation is also now enabled in
 114    man(7) format documents.  Many other general improvements have been
 115    implemented.
 116
 117 Changes in version 1.11.5, released on July 24, 2011
 118
 119  * Significant eqn(7) improvements.  mdocml can now parse arbitrary eqn
 120    input (although few GNU extensions are accepted, nor is mixing
 121    low-level roff with eqn).  See the eqn(7) manual for details.
 122    For the time being, equations are rendered as simple in-line text.
 123    The equation parser satisfies the language specified in the
 124    Second Edition User's Guide:
 125    http://www.kohala.com/start/troff/v7man/eqn/eqn2e.ps
 126
 127 Changes in version 1.11.4, released on July 12, 2011
 128
 129  * Bug-fixes and clean-ups across all systems, especially in mandocdb(8)
 130    and the man(7) parser.  This release was significantly assisted by
 131    participants in OpenBSD's c2k11.  Thanks!
 132
 133 Changes in version 1.11.3, released on May 26, 2011
 134
 135  * Introduce locale-encoding of output with the -Tlocale output option and
 136    Unicode escaped-character input.  See mandoc(1) and mandoc_char(7),
 137    respectively, for details.  This allows for non-ASCII characters (e.g.,
 138    \[u5000]) to be rendered in the locale's encoding, if said environment
 139    supports wide-character encoding (if it does not, -Tascii is used
 140    instead).  Locale support can be turned off at compile time by removing
 141    -DUSE_WCHAR in the Makefile, in which case -Tlocale is always a synonym
 142    for -Tascii.
 143  * Furthermore, multibyte-encoded documents, such as those in UTF-8, may
 144    be on-the-fly recoded into mandoc(1) input by using the newly-added
 145    preconv(1) utility.  Note: in the future, this feature may be
 146    integrated into mandoc(1).
 147
 148 Changes in version 1.11.2, released on May 12, 2011
 149
 150  * Corrected some installation issues in version 1.11.1.
 151  * Further migration to libmandoc.
 152  * Initial public release (this utility is very much under development)
 153    of mandocdb(8).  This utility produces keyword databases of manual
 154    content, which features semantic querying of manual content.
 155
 156 Changes in version 1.11.1, released on April 4, 2011
 157
 158  * The earlier libroff, libmdoc, and libman soup have been merged into
 159    a single library, libmandoc, which manages all aspects of parsing
 160    real manuals, from line-handling to tbl(7) parsing.
 161  * As usual, many general fixes and improvements have also occurred.
 162    In particular, a great deal of redundancy and superfluous code has
 163    been removed with the merging of the backend libraries.
 164  * see also the changes in 1.10.10
 165
 166 Changes in version 1.10.10, March 20, 2011, NOT released
 167
 168  * Initial eqn(7) functionality is in place.  For the time being,
 169    this is limited to the recognition of equation blocks;
 170    future version of mdocml will expand upon this framework.
 171
 172 Changes in version 1.10.9, released on January 7, 2011
 173
 174  * Many back-end fixes have been implemented: argument handling (quoting),
 175    man(7) improvements, error/warning classes, and many more.
 176  * Initial tbl(7) functionality (see the "TS", "TE", and "T&" macros in
 177    the roff(7) manual) has been merged from tbl.bsd.lv.  Output is still
 178    minimal, especially for -Thtml and -Txhtml, but manages to at least
 179    display data.  This means that mandoc(1) now has built-in support
 180    for two troff preprocessors via libroff: soelim(1) and tbl(1).
 181
 182 Changes in version 1.10.8, released on December 24, 2010
 183
 184  * Overhauled the -Thtml and -Txhtml output modes.  They now display
 185    readable output in arbitrary browsers, including text-based ones like
 186    lynx(1).  See HTML and XHTML manuals in the DOCUMENTATION section
 187    for examples.  Attention: available style-sheet classes have been
 188    considerably changed!  See the example.style.css file for details.
 189    Lastly, libmdoc and libman have been cleaned up and reduced in size
 190    and complexity.
 191  * see also the changes in 1.10.7
 192
 193 Changes in version 1.10.7, December 6, 2010, NOT released
 194
 195  Significant improvements merged from OpenBSD downstream, including:
 196  * many new roff(7) components,
 197  * in-line implementation of troff's soelim(1),
 198  * broken-block handling,
 199  * overhauled error classifications, and
 200  * cleaned up handling of error conditions.
 201
 202 Changes in version 1.10.6, released on September 27, 2010
 203
 204  * Calling conventions for mandoc(1) have changed: -W improved and -f
 205    deprecated.
 206  * Non-ASCII characters are also now uniformly discarded.
 207  * Lots of documentation improvements.
 208  * Many incremental fixes accomodating for groff's more interesting
 209    productions.
 210  * Lastly, pod2man(1) preambles are now fully accepted after some
 211    considerable roff(7) and special character support.
 212
 213 Changes in version 1.10.5, released on July 27, 2010
 214
 215  * Primarily a bug-fix and polish release, but including -Tpdf support
 216    in mandoc(1) by way of "Summer of Code".  Highlights:
 217  * fix "Sm" and "Bd" handling
 218  * fix end-of-sentence handling for embedded sentences
 219  * polish man(7) documentation
 220  * document all mdoc(7) macros
 221  * polish mandoc(1) -Tps output
 222  * lots of internal clean-ups in character escapes
 223  * un-break literal contexts in man(7) documents
 224  * improve -Thtml output for -man
 225  * add mandoc(1) -Tpdf support
 226
 227 Changes in version 1.10.4, released on July 12, 2010
 228
 229  * Lots of features developed during both "Summer of Code" and the
 230    OpenBSD c2k10 hackathon:
 231  * minimal "ds" roff(7) symbols are supported
 232  * beautified SYNOPSIS section output
 233  * acceptance of scope-block breakage in mdoc(7)
 234  * clarify error message status
 235  * many minor bug-fixes and formatting issues resolved
 236  * see also changes in 1.10.3
 237
 238 Changes in version 1.10.3, June 29, 2010, NOT released
 239
 240  * variable font-width and paper-size support in mandoc(1) -Tps output
 241  * "Bk" mdoc(7) support
 242
 243 Changes in version 1.10.2, released on June 19, 2010
 244
 245  * Small release featuring text-decoration in -Tps output,
 246    a few minor relaxations of errors, and some optimisations.
 247
 248 Changes in version 1.10.1, released on June 7, 2010
 249
 250  * This primarily focusses on the "Bl" and "It" macros described in
 251    mdoc(7).  Multi-line column support is now fully compatible with groff,
 252    as are implicit list entries for columns.
 253  * Removed manuals(7) in favour of http://manpages.bsd.lv.
 254  * The way we handle the SYNOPSIS section (see the SYNOPSIS documentation
 255    in MANUAL STRUCTURE) has also been considerably simplified compared
 256    to groff's method.
 257  * Furthermore, the -Owidth=width output option has been added to -Tascii,
 258    see mandoc(1).
 259  * Lastly, initial PostScript output has been added with the -Tps option
 260    to mandoc(1).  It's brutally simple at the moment: fixed-font, with no
 261    font decorations.
 262
 263 Changes in version 1.10.0, released on May 29, 2010
 264
 265  * Release consisting of the results from the m2k10 hackathon and up-merge
 266    from OpenBSD.  This requires a significant note of thanks to Ingo
 267    Schwarze (OpenBSD) and Joerg Sonnenberger (NetBSD) for their hard work,
 268    and again to Joerg for hosting m2k10.  Highlights (mostly cribbed from
 269    Ingo's m2k10 report) follow in no particular order:
 270  * a libroff preprocessor in front of libmdoc and libman stripping out
 271    roff(7) instructions;
 272  * end-of-sentence (EOS) detection in free-form and macro lines;
 273  * correct handling of tab-separated columnar lists in mdoc(7);
 274  * improved main calling routines to optionally use mmap(3) for better
 275    performance;
 276  * cleaned up exiting when invoked as -Tlint or over multiple files
 277    with -fign-errors;
 278  * error and warning message handling re-written to be unified for
 279    libroff, libmdoc, and libman;
 280  * handling of badly-nested explicit-scoped macros;
 281  * improved free-form text parsing in libman and libmdoc;
 282  * significant GNU troff compatibility improvements in -Tascii,
 283    largely in terms of spacing;
 284  * a regression framework for making sure the many fragilities of GNU
 285    troff aren't trampled in subsequent work;
 286  * support for -Tascii breaking at hyphens encountered in free-form text;
 287  * and many more minor fixes and improvements
 288
 289 Changes in version 1.9.25, released on May 13, 2010
 290
 291  * Fixed handling of "\*(Ba" escape.
 292  * Backed out -fno-ign-chars (pointless complexity).
 293  * Fixed erroneous breaking of literal lines.
 294  * Fixed SYNOPSIS breaking lines before non-initial macros.
 295  * Changed default section ordering.
 296  * Most importantly, the framework for end-of-sentence double-spacing is
 297    in place, now implemented for the "end-of-sentence, end-of-line" rule.
 298  * This is a stable roll-back point before the mandoc hackathon in Rostock!
 299
 300 Changes in version 1.9.24, released on May 9, 2010
 301
 302  * Rolled back break-at-hyphen.
 303  * -DUGLY is now the default (no feature splits!).
 304  * Free-form text is not de-chunked any more: lines are passed
 305    whole-sale into the front-end, including whitespace.
 306  * Added mailing lists.
 307
 308 Changes in version 1.9.23, released on April 7, 2010
 309
 310  * mdocml has been linked to the OpenBSD build.
 311  * This version incorporates many small changes, mostly from patches
 312    by OpenBSD, allowing crufty manuals to slip by with warnings instead
 313    of erroring-out.
 314  * Some subtle semantic issues, such as punctuation scope, have also
 315    been fixed.
 316  * Lastly, some issues with -Thtml have been fixed, which prompted an
 317    update to the online manual pages style layout.
 318
 319 Changes in version 1.9.22, released on March 31, 2010
 320
 321  * Adjusted merge of the significant work by Ingo Schwarze
 322    in getting "Xo" blocks (block full implicit, e.g., "It"
 323    for non-columnar lists) to work properly.  This isn't
 324    enabled by default: you must specify -DUGLY as a compiler
 325    flag (see the Makefile for details).
 326
 327 Changes in version 1.9.20, released on March 30, 2010
 328
 329  * More efforts to get roff instructions in man(7) documents under
 330    control.  Note that roff instructions embedded in line-scoped,
 331    next-line macros (e.g. "B") are not supported.
 332  * Leading punctuation for mdoc(7) macros, such as "Fl ( ( a",
 333    are now correctly handled.
 334
 335 Changes in version 1.9.18, released on March 27, 2010
 336
 337  * Many fixes (largely pertaining to scope)
 338    and improvements (e.g., handling of apostrophe-control macros,
 339    which fixes the strange "BR" seen in some macro output)
 340    to handling roff instructions in man(7) documents.
 341
 342 Changes in version 1.9.17, released on March 25, 2010
 343
 344  * Accept perlpod(1) standard preamble.
 345  * Also accept (and discard) "de", "dei", "am", "ami", and "ig"
 346    roff macro blocks.
 347
 348 Changes in version 1.9.16, released on March 22, 2010
 349
 350  * Inspired by patches and bug reports by Ingo Schwarze,
 351    allowed man(7) to accept non-printing elements to be nested
 352    within next-line scopes, such as "br" within "B" or "TH",
 353    which is valid roff.
 354  * Longsoon architecture also noted and Makefile cleaned up.
 355
 356 Changes in version 1.9.15, released on February 18, 2010
 357
 358  * Moved to our new BSD.lv home.
 359  * XHTML is now an acceptable output mode for mandoc(1);
 360  * "Xr" made more compatible with groff;
 361  * "Vt" fixed when invoked in SYNOPSIS;
 362  * "\\" escape removed;
 363  * end-of-line white-space detected for all lines;
 364  * subtle bug fixed in list display for some modes;
 365  * compatibility layer checked in for compilation in diverse
 366    UNIX systems;
 367  * and column lengths handled correctly.
 368
 369 For older releases, see the ChangeLog files
 370 in http://mdocml.bsd.lv/snapshots/ .