1 .\" $Id: mandoc.1,v 1.184 2017/03/27 18:51:36 schwarze Exp $
3 .\" Copyright (c) 2009, 2010, 2011 Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv>
4 .\" Copyright (c) 2012, 2014-2017 Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>
6 .\" Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
7 .\" purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
8 .\" copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
10 .\" THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
11 .\" WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
12 .\" MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
13 .\" ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
14 .\" WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
15 .\" ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
16 .\" OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
18 .Dd $Mdocdate: March 27 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
79 Specify the input encoding.
87 If not specified, autodetection uses the first match in the following
91 If the first three bytes of the input file are the UTF-8 byte order
92 mark (BOM, 0xefbbbf), input is interpreted as
95 If the first or second line of the input file matches the
99 .D1 .\e" -*- Oo ...; Oc coding: Ar encoding ; No -*-
101 then input is interpreted according to
104 If the first non-ASCII byte in the file introduces a valid UTF-8
105 sequence, input is interpreted as
108 Otherwise, input is interpreted as
114 all input files are interpreted as
118 all input files are interpreted as
120 By default, the input language is automatically detected for each file:
121 if the the first macro is
127 parser is used; otherwise, the
130 With other arguments,
134 Comma-separated output options.
139 for available formats.
143 Specify the minimum message
145 to be reported on the standard error output and to affect the exit status.
169 to exit after parsing a file that causes warnings or errors of at least
171 No formatted output will be produced from that file.
176 are requested, they can be joined with a comma, for example
177 .Fl W Cm error , Ns Cm stop .
179 Read input from zero or more files.
180 If unspecified, reads from stdin.
181 If multiple files are specified,
183 will halt with the first failed parse.
188 are also supported and are documented in man(1).
195 also supports the options
202 are mutually exclusive and override each other.
206 utility accepts the following
208 arguments, which correspond to output modes:
209 .Bl -tag -width "-T markdown"
211 Produce 7-bit ASCII output.
215 Produce HTML5, CSS1, and MathML output.
219 Parse only: produce no output.
223 Encode output using the current locale.
238 .Sx Markdown Output .
244 Produce PostScript output.
246 .Sx PostScript Output .
248 Produce an indented parse tree.
250 .Sx Syntax tree output .
252 Encode output in the UTF\-8 multi-byte format.
256 This is a synonym for
260 If multiple input files are specified, these will be processed by the
261 corresponding filter in-order.
265 is rendered in standard 7-bit ASCII documented in
268 Font styles are applied by using back-spaced encoding such that an
272 .Sq _ Ns \e[bs] Ns c ,
275 is the back-space character number 8.
276 Emboldened characters are rendered as
277 .Sq c Ns \e[bs] Ns c .
279 The special characters documented in
281 are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent.
283 Output width is limited to 78 visible columns unless literal input lines
288 arguments are accepted:
290 .It Cm indent Ns = Ns Ar indent
291 The left margin for normal text is set to
293 blank characters instead of the default of five for
297 Increasing this is not recommended; it may result in degraded formatting,
298 for example overfull lines or ugly line breaks.
299 .It Cm width Ns = Ns Ar width
300 The output width is set to
302 which will normalise to \(>=58.
307 conforms to HTML5 using optional self-closing tags.
308 Default styles use only CSS1.
309 Equations rendered from
315 file documents style-sheet classes available for customising output.
316 If a style-sheet is not specified with
319 defaults to simple output (via an embedded style-sheet)
320 readable in any graphical or text-based web
323 Special characters are rendered in decimal-encoded UTF\-8.
327 arguments are accepted:
330 Omit the <!DOCTYPE> declaration and the <html>, <head>, and <body>
331 elements and only emit the subtree below the <body> element.
334 argument will be ignored.
335 This is useful when embedding manual content within existing documents.
336 .It Cm includes Ns = Ns Ar fmt
341 is used as a template for linked header files (usually via the
346 are replaced with the include filename.
347 The default is not to present a
349 .It Cm man Ns = Ns Ar fmt
353 .Ar ../html%S/%N.%S.html ,
354 is used as a template for linked manuals (usually via the
361 are replaced with the linked manual's name and section, respectively.
362 If no section is included, section 1 is assumed.
363 The default is not to
365 .It Cm style Ns = Ns Ar style.css
368 is used for an external style-sheet.
369 This must be a valid absolute or
373 Locale-depending output encoding is triggered with
377 This option is not available on all systems: systems without locale
378 support, or those whose internal representation is not natively UCS-4,
383 for font style specification and available command-line arguments.
385 Translate input format into
388 This is useful for distributing manual sources to legacy systems
395 is passed as input, it is translated into
397 If the input format is
399 the input is copied to the output, expanding any
403 The parser is also run, and as usual, the
407 are displayed before copying the input to the output.
414 .Lk http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax.text\
415 "John Gruber's 2004 specification" .
416 The output also almost conforms to the
417 .Lk http://commonmark.org/ CommonMark
420 The character set used for the markdown output is ASCII.
421 Non-ASCII characters are encoded as HTML entities.
422 Since that is not possible in literal font contexts, because these
423 are rendered as code spans and code blocks in the markdown output,
424 non-ASCII characters are transliterated to ASCII approximations in
427 Markdown is a very weak markup language, so all semantic markup is
428 lost, and even part of the presentational markup may be lost.
429 Do not use this as an intermediate step in converting to HTML;
439 input languages are not supported by
443 PDF-1.1 output may be generated by
446 .Sx PostScript Output
449 arguments and defaults.
450 .Ss PostScript Output
453 Level-2 pages may be generated by
455 Output pages default to letter sized and are rendered in the Times font
457 Margins are calculated as 1/9 the page length and width.
460 Special characters are rendered as in
465 arguments are accepted:
467 .It Cm paper Ns = Ns Ar name
477 You may also manually specify dimensions as
479 width by height in millimetres.
480 If an unknown value is encountered,
487 to force a UTF\-8 locale.
490 for details and options.
491 .Ss Syntax tree output
494 to show a human readable representation of the syntax tree.
495 It is useful for debugging the source code of manual pages.
496 The exact format is subject to change, so don't write parsers for it.
498 The first paragraph shows meta data found in the
503 line, or the fallbacks used.
505 In the tree dump, each output line shows one syntax tree node.
506 Child nodes are indented with respect to their parent node.
511 For macro nodes, the macro name; for text and
514 There is a special format for
518 Node type (text, elem, block, head, body, body-end, tail, tbl, eqn).
523 An opening parenthesis if the node is an opening delimiter.
525 An asterisk if the node starts a new input line.
527 The input line number (starting at one).
531 The input column number (starting at one).
533 A closing parenthesis if the node is a closing delimiter.
535 A full stop if the node ends a sentence.
537 BROKEN if the node is a block broken by another block.
539 NOSRC if the node is not in the input file,
540 but automatically generated from macros.
542 NOPRT if the node is not supposed to generate output
543 for any output format.
549 argument is accepted:
552 Skip validation and show the unvalidated syntax tree.
553 This can help to find out whether a given behaviour is caused by
554 the parser or by the validator.
555 Meta data is not available in this case.
558 .Bl -tag -width MANPAGER
560 Any non-empty value of the environment variable
562 is used instead of the standard pagination program,
573 Specifies the pagination program to use when
576 If neither PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined,
589 utility exits with one of the following values, controlled by the message
595 .Bl -tag -width Ds -compact
597 No warnings or errors occurred, or those that did were ignored because
598 they were lower than the requested
601 At least one warning occurred, but no error, and
605 At least one parsing error occurred,
606 but no unsupported feature was encountered, and
612 At least one unsupported feature was encountered, and
619 Invalid command line arguments were specified.
620 No input files have been read.
622 An operating system error occurred, for example exhaustion
623 of memory, file descriptors, or process table entries.
626 to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file.
634 To page manuals to the terminal:
636 .Dl $ mandoc \-W all,stop mandoc.1 2\*(Gt&1 | less
637 .Dl $ mandoc mandoc.1 mdoc.3 mdoc.7 | less
639 To produce HTML manuals with
643 .Dl $ mandoc \-T html -O style=mandoc.css mdoc.7 \*(Gt mdoc.7.html
645 To check over a large set of manuals:
647 .Dl $ mandoc \-T lint \(gafind /usr/src -name \e*\e.[1-9]\(ga
649 To produce a series of PostScript manuals for A4 paper:
651 .Dl $ mandoc \-T ps \-O paper=a4 mdoc.7 man.7 \*(Gt manuals.ps
657 format, for use on systems lacking an
661 .Dl $ mandoc \-T man foo.mdoc \*(Gt foo.man
663 Messages displayed by
667 .D1 Nm Ns : Ar file : Ns Ar line : Ns Ar column : level : message : macro args
669 Line and column numbers start at 1.
670 Both are omitted for messages referring to an input file as a whole.
671 Macro names and arguments are omitted where meaningless.
672 Fatal messages about invalid command line arguments
673 or operating system errors, for example when memory is exhausted,
680 Message levels have the following meanings:
681 .Bl -tag -width "warning"
683 An input file uses unsupported low-level
686 The output may be incomplete and/or misformatted,
687 so using GNU troff instead of
689 to process the file may be preferable.
691 An input file contains invalid syntax that cannot be safely interpreted.
692 By discarding part of the input or inserting missing tokens,
693 the parser is able to continue, and the error does not prevent
694 generation of formatted output, but typically, preparing that
695 output involves information loss, broken document structure
696 or unintended formatting, no matter whether
698 or GNU troff is used.
699 In many cases, the output of
701 and GNU troff is identical, but in some,
703 is more resilient than GNU troff with respect to malformed input.
705 Non-existent or unreadable input files are also reported on the
708 In that case, the parser cannot even be started and no output
709 is produced from those input files.
711 An input file uses obsolete, discouraged or non-portable syntax.
712 All the same, the meaning of the input is unambiguous and a correct
713 rendering can be produced.
714 Documents causing warnings may render poorly when using other
715 formatting tools instead of
724 levels except those about non-existent or unreadable input files
725 are hidden unless their level, or a lower level, is requested using a
730 .Ss Warnings related to the document prologue
732 .It Sy "missing manual title, using UNTITLED"
736 macro has no arguments, or there is no
738 macro before the first non-prologue macro.
739 .It Sy "missing manual title, using \(dq\(dq"
743 macro, or it has no arguments.
744 .It Sy "lower case character in document title"
746 The title is still used as given in the
751 .It Sy "missing manual section, using \(dq\(dq"
757 macro lacks the mandatory section argument.
758 .It Sy "unknown manual section"
760 The section number in a
762 line is invalid, but still used.
763 .It Sy "missing date, using today's date"
765 The document was parsed as
771 macro has no arguments or only empty arguments;
772 or the document was parsed as
778 macro has less than three arguments or its third argument is empty.
779 .It Sy "cannot parse date, using it verbatim"
785 macro does not follow the conventional format.
786 .It Sy "missing Os macro, using \(dq\(dq"
788 The default or current system is not shown in this case.
789 .It Sy "duplicate prologue macro"
791 One of the prologue macros occurs more than once.
792 The last instance overrides all previous ones.
793 .It Sy "late prologue macro"
799 macro occurs after some non-prologue macro, but still takes effect.
800 .It Sy "skipping late title macro"
804 macro appears after the first non-prologue macro.
805 Traditional formatters cannot handle this because
806 they write the page header before parsing the document body.
807 Even though this technical restriction does not apply to
809 traditional semantics is preserved.
810 The late macro is discarded including its arguments.
811 .It Sy "prologue macros out of order"
813 The prologue macros are not given in the conventional order
817 All three macros are used even when given in another order.
819 .Ss Warnings regarding document structure
821 .It Sy ".so is fragile, better use ln(1)"
823 Including files only works when the parser program runs with the correct
824 current working directory.
825 .It Sy "no document body"
827 The document body contains neither text nor macros.
828 An empty document is shown, consisting only of a header and a footer line.
829 .It Sy "content before first section header"
831 Some macros or text precede the first
836 The offending macros and text are parsed and added to the top level
837 of the syntax tree, outside any section block.
838 .It Sy "first section is not NAME"
840 The argument of the first
848 .It Sy "NAME section without Nm before Nd"
850 The NAME section does not contain any
852 child macro before the first
855 .It Sy "NAME section without description"
857 The NAME section lacks the mandatory
860 .It Sy "description not at the end of NAME"
862 The NAME section does contain an
864 child macro, but other content follows it.
865 .It Sy "bad NAME section content"
867 The NAME section contains plain text or macros other than
871 .It Sy "missing comma before name"
873 The NAME section contains an
875 macro that is neither the first one nor preceded by a comma.
876 .It Sy "missing description line, using \(dq\(dq"
880 macro lacks the required argument.
881 The title line of the manual will end after the dash.
882 .It Sy "description line outside NAME section"
886 macro appears outside the NAME section.
887 The arguments are printed anyway and the following text is used for
889 but none of that behaviour is portable.
890 .It Sy "sections out of conventional order"
892 A standard section occurs after another section it usually precedes.
893 All section titles are used as given,
894 and the order of sections is not changed.
895 .It Sy "duplicate section title"
897 The same standard section title occurs more than once.
898 .It Sy "unexpected section"
900 A standard section header occurs in a section of the manual
901 where it normally isn't useful.
902 .It Sy "unusual Xr order"
904 In the SEE ALSO section, an
906 macro with a lower section number follows one with a higher number,
909 macros referring to the same section are out of alphabetical order.
910 .It Sy "unusual Xr punctuation"
912 In the SEE ALSO section, punctuation between two
914 macros differs from a single comma, or there is trailing punctuation
918 .It Sy "AUTHORS section without An macro"
920 An AUTHORS sections contains no
922 macros, or only empty ones.
923 Probably, there are author names lacking markup.
925 .Ss "Warnings related to macros and nesting"
927 .It Sy "obsolete macro"
931 manual for replacements.
932 .It Sy "macro neither callable nor escaped"
934 The name of a macro that is not callable appears on a macro line.
935 It is printed verbatim.
936 If the intention is to call it, move it to its own input line;
937 otherwise, escape it by prepending
939 .It Sy "skipping paragraph macro"
942 documents, this happens
945 at the beginning and end of sections and subsections
947 right before non-compact lists and displays
949 at the end of items in non-column, non-compact lists
951 and for multiple consecutive paragraph macros.
955 documents, it happens
967 macros having neither head nor body arguments
978 .It Sy "moving paragraph macro out of list"
982 list contains a trailing paragraph macro.
983 The paragraph macro is moved after the end of the list.
984 .It Sy "skipping no-space macro"
986 An input line begins with an
989 The macro is ignored.
990 .It Sy "blocks badly nested"
992 If two blocks intersect, one should completely contain the other.
993 Otherwise, rendered output is likely to look strange in any output
994 format, and rendering in SGML-based output formats is likely to be
995 outright wrong because such languages do not support badly nested
997 Typical examples of badly nested blocks are
998 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bo \&Ac \&Bc
1000 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bq \&Ac .
1008 .It Sy "nested displays are not portable"
1015 display occurs nested inside another
1020 but fails with most other implementations.
1021 .It Sy "moving content out of list"
1025 list block contains text or macros before the first
1028 The offending children are moved before the beginning of the list.
1029 .It Sy "fill mode already enabled, skipping"
1033 request occurs even though the document is still in fill mode,
1034 or already switched back to fill mode.
1036 .It Sy "fill mode already disabled, skipping"
1040 request occurs even though the document already switched to no-fill mode
1041 and did not switch back to fill mode yet.
1043 .It Sy "line scope broken"
1045 While parsing the next-line scope of the previous macro,
1046 another macro is found that prematurely terminates the previous one.
1047 The previous, interrupted macro is deleted from the parse tree.
1049 .Ss "Warnings related to missing arguments"
1051 .It Sy "skipping empty request"
1053 The macro name is missing from a macro definition request,
1056 control statement or operation keyword lacks its required argument.
1057 .It Sy "conditional request controls empty scope"
1059 A conditional request is only useful if any of the following
1060 follows it on the same logical input line:
1065 keyword to open a multi-line scope.
1067 A request or macro or some text, resulting in a single-line scope.
1069 The immediate end of the logical line without any intervening whitespace,
1070 resulting in next-line scope.
1072 Here, a conditional request is followed by trailing whitespace only,
1073 and there is no other content on its logical input line.
1074 Note that it doesn't matter whether the logical input line is split
1075 across multiple physical input lines using
1077 line continuation characters.
1078 This is one of the rare cases
1079 where trailing whitespace is syntactically significant.
1080 The conditional request controls a scope containing whitespace only,
1081 so it is unlikely to have a significant effect,
1082 except that it may control a following
1085 .It Sy "skipping empty macro"
1087 The indicated macro has no arguments and hence no effect.
1088 .It Sy "empty block"
1099 block contains nothing in its body and will produce no output.
1100 .It Sy "empty argument, using 0n"
1102 The required width is missing after
1109 .It Sy "missing display type, using -ragged"
1113 macro is invoked without the required display type.
1114 .It Sy "list type is not the first argument"
1118 macro, at least one other argument precedes the type argument.
1121 utility copes with any argument order, but some other
1123 implementations do not.
1124 .It Sy "missing -width in -tag list, using 8n"
1133 .It Sy "missing utility name, using \(dq\(dq"
1137 macro is called without an argument before
1139 has first been called with an argument.
1140 .It Sy "missing function name, using \(dq\(dq"
1144 macro is called without an argument.
1145 No function name is printed.
1146 .It Sy "empty head in list item"
1158 macro lacks the required argument.
1159 The item head is left empty.
1160 .It Sy "empty list item"
1172 An empty list item is shown.
1173 .It Sy "missing font type, using \efR"
1177 macro has no argument.
1178 It switches to the default font.
1179 .It Sy "unknown font type, using \efR"
1183 argument is invalid.
1184 The default font is used instead.
1185 .It Sy "nothing follows prefix"
1189 macro has no argument, or only one argument and no macro follows
1190 on the same input line.
1191 This defeats its purpose; in particular, spacing is not suppressed
1192 before the text or macros following on the next input line.
1193 .It Sy "empty reference block"
1197 macro is immediately followed by an
1199 macro on the next input line.
1200 Such an empty block does not produce any output.
1201 .It Sy "missing section argument"
1205 macro lacks its second, section number argument.
1206 The first argument, i.e. the name, is printed, but without subsequent
1208 .It Sy "missing -std argument, adding it"
1214 macro lacks the required
1221 even when it is not specified, but other implementations may not.
1222 .It Sy "missing option string, using \(dq\(dq"
1226 macro is invoked without any argument.
1227 An empty pair of square brackets is shown.
1228 .It Sy "missing resource identifier, using \(dq\(dq"
1232 macro is invoked without any argument.
1233 An empty pair of angle brackets is shown.
1234 .It Sy "missing eqn box, using \(dq\(dq"
1236 A diacritic mark or a binary operator is found,
1237 but there is nothing to the left of it.
1238 An empty box is inserted.
1240 .Ss "Warnings related to bad macro arguments"
1242 .It Sy "unterminated quoted argument"
1244 Macro arguments can be enclosed in double quote characters
1245 such that space characters and macro names contained in the quoted
1246 argument need not be escaped.
1247 The closing quote of the last argument of a macro can be omitted.
1248 However, omitting it is not recommended because it makes the code
1250 .It Sy "duplicate argument"
1256 macro has more than one
1263 All but the last instances of these arguments are ignored.
1264 .It Sy "skipping duplicate argument"
1268 macro has more than one
1273 All but the first of these arguments are ignored.
1274 .It Sy "skipping duplicate display type"
1278 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1279 .It Sy "skipping duplicate list type"
1283 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1284 .It Sy "skipping -width argument"
1298 .It Sy "wrong number of cells"
1301 list, the number of tabs or
1303 macros is less than the number expected from the list header line
1304 or exceeds the expected number by more than one.
1305 Missing cells remain empty, and all cells exceeding the number of
1306 columns are joined into one single cell.
1307 .It Sy "unknown AT&T UNIX version"
1311 macro has an invalid argument.
1312 It is used verbatim, with
1315 .It Sy "comma in function argument"
1321 macro contains a comma; it should probably be split into two arguments.
1322 .It Sy "parenthesis in function name"
1324 The first argument of an
1328 macro contains an opening or closing parenthesis; that's probably wrong,
1329 parentheses are added automatically.
1330 .It Sy "invalid content in Rs block"
1334 block contains plain text or non-% macros.
1335 The bogus content is left in the syntax tree.
1336 Formatting may be poor.
1337 .It Sy "invalid Boolean argument"
1341 macro has an argument other than
1345 The invalid argument is moved out of the macro, which leaves the macro
1346 empty, causing it to toggle the spacing mode.
1347 .It Sy "unknown font, skipping request"
1355 layout modifier has an unknown
1358 .It Sy "odd number of characters in request"
1362 request contains an odd number of characters.
1363 The last character is mapped to the blank character.
1365 .Ss "Warnings related to plain text"
1367 .It Sy "blank line in fill mode, using .sp"
1369 The meaning of blank input lines is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1370 In fill mode, line breaks of text input lines are not supposed to be
1372 However, for compatibility with groff, blank lines in fill mode
1376 .It Sy "tab in filled text"
1378 The meaning of tab characters is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1379 In fill mode, whitespace is not supposed to be significant
1380 on text input lines.
1381 As an implementation dependent choice, tab characters on text lines
1382 are passed through to the formatters in any case.
1383 Given that the text before the tab character will be filled,
1384 it is hard to predict which tab stop position the tab will advance to.
1385 .It Sy "whitespace at end of input line"
1386 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1387 Whitespace at the end of input lines is almost never semantically
1388 significant \(em but in the odd case where it might be, it is
1389 extremely confusing when reviewing and maintaining documents.
1390 .It Sy "new sentence, new line"
1392 A new sentence starts in the middle of a text line.
1393 Start it on a new input line to help formatters produce correct spacing.
1394 .It Sy "bad comment style"
1396 Comment lines start with a dot, a backslash, and a double-quote character.
1399 utility treats the line as a comment line even without the backslash,
1400 but leaving out the backslash might not be portable.
1401 .It Sy "invalid escape sequence"
1403 An escape sequence has an invalid opening argument delimiter, lacks the
1404 closing argument delimiter, or the argument has too few characters.
1405 If the argument is incomplete,
1409 expand to an empty string,
1415 to the length of the incomplete argument.
1416 All other invalid escape sequences are ignored.
1417 .It Sy "undefined string, using \(dq\(dq"
1419 If a string is used without being defined before,
1420 its value is implicitly set to the empty string.
1421 However, defining strings explicitly before use
1422 keeps the code more readable.
1424 .Ss "Warnings related to tables"
1426 .It Sy "tbl line starts with span"
1428 The first cell in a table layout line is a horizontal span
1430 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1431 .It Sy "tbl column starts with span"
1433 The first line of a table layout specification
1434 requests a vertical span
1436 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1437 .It Sy "skipping vertical bar in tbl layout"
1439 A table layout specification contains more than two consecutive vertical bars.
1440 A double bar is printed, all additional bars are discarded.
1442 .Ss "Errors related to tables"
1444 .It Sy "non-alphabetic character in tbl options"
1446 The table options line contains a character other than a letter,
1447 blank, or comma where the beginning of an option name is expected.
1448 The character is ignored.
1449 .It Sy "skipping unknown tbl option"
1451 The table options line contains a string of letters that does not
1452 match any known option name.
1453 The word is ignored.
1454 .It Sy "missing tbl option argument"
1456 A table option that requires an argument is not followed by an
1457 opening parenthesis, or the opening parenthesis is immediately
1458 followed by a closing parenthesis.
1459 The option is ignored.
1460 .It Sy "wrong tbl option argument size"
1462 A table option argument contains an invalid number of characters.
1463 Both the option and the argument are ignored.
1464 .It Sy "empty tbl layout"
1466 A table layout specification is completely empty,
1467 specifying zero lines and zero columns.
1468 As a fallback, a single left-justified column is used.
1469 .It Sy "invalid character in tbl layout"
1471 A table layout specification contains a character that can neither
1472 be interpreted as a layout key character nor as a layout modifier,
1473 or a modifier precedes the first key.
1474 The invalid character is discarded.
1475 .It Sy "unmatched parenthesis in tbl layout"
1477 A table layout specification contains an opening parenthesis,
1478 but no matching closing parenthesis.
1479 The rest of the input line, starting from the parenthesis, has no effect.
1480 .It Sy "tbl without any data cells"
1482 A table does not contain any data cells.
1483 It will probably produce no output.
1484 .It Sy "ignoring data in spanned tbl cell"
1486 A table cell is marked as a horizontal span
1490 in the table layout, but it contains data.
1491 The data is ignored.
1492 .It Sy "ignoring extra tbl data cells"
1494 A data line contains more cells than the corresponding layout line.
1495 The data in the extra cells is ignored.
1496 .It Sy "data block open at end of tbl"
1498 A data block is opened with
1500 but never closed with a matching
1502 The remaining data lines of the table are all put into one cell,
1503 and any remaining cells stay empty.
1505 .Ss "Errors related to roff, mdoc, and man code"
1507 .It Sy "input stack limit exceeded, infinite loop?"
1509 Explicit recursion limits are implemented for the following features,
1510 in order to prevent infinite loops:
1513 expansion of nested escape sequences
1514 including expansion of strings and number registers,
1516 expansion of nested user-defined macros,
1522 When a limit is hit, the output is incorrect, typically losing
1523 some content, but the parser can continue.
1524 .It Sy "skipping bad character"
1525 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1526 The input file contains a byte that is not a printable
1529 The message mentions the character number.
1530 The offending byte is replaced with a question mark
1532 Consider editing the input file to replace the byte with an ASCII
1533 transliteration of the intended character.
1534 .It Sy "skipping unknown macro"
1535 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1536 The first identifier on a request or macro line is neither recognized as a
1538 request, nor as a user-defined macro, nor, respectively, as an
1543 It may be mistyped or unsupported.
1544 The request or macro is discarded including its arguments.
1545 .It Sy "skipping insecure request"
1547 An input file attempted to run a shell command
1548 or to read or write an external file.
1549 Such attempts are denied for security reasons.
1550 .It Sy "skipping item outside list"
1554 macro occurs outside any
1559 delimiter occurs outside any pile.
1560 It is discarded including its arguments.
1561 .It Sy "skipping column outside column list"
1565 macro occurs outside any
1568 It is discarded including its arguments.
1569 .It Sy "skipping end of block that is not open"
1570 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1571 Various syntax elements can only be used to explicitly close blocks
1572 that have previously been opened.
1575 block closing macro, a
1582 right delimiter or closing brace, or the end of an equation, table, or
1584 conditional request is encountered but no matching block is open.
1585 The offending request or macro is discarded.
1586 .It Sy "fewer RS blocks open, skipping"
1590 macro is invoked with an argument, but less than the specified number of
1596 .It Sy "inserting missing end of block"
1600 macros as well as tables require explicit closing by dedicated macros.
1601 A block that doesn't support bad nesting
1602 ends before all of its children are properly closed.
1603 The open child nodes are closed implicitly.
1604 .It Sy "appending missing end of block"
1605 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1606 At the end of the document, an explicit
1614 block, an equation, table, or
1616 conditional or ignore block is still open.
1617 The open block is closed implicitly.
1618 .It Sy "escaped character not allowed in a name"
1620 Macro, string and register identifiers consist of printable,
1621 non-whitespace ASCII characters.
1622 Escape sequences and characters and strings expressed in terms of them
1623 cannot form part of a name.
1624 The first argument of an
1632 request, or any argument of an
1634 request, or the name of a request or user defined macro being called,
1635 is terminated by an escape sequence.
1641 the request has no effect at all.
1648 what was parsed up to this point is used as the arguments to the request,
1649 and the rest of the input line is discarded including the escape sequence.
1650 When parsing for a request or a user-defined macro name to be called,
1651 only the escape sequence is discarded.
1652 The characters preceding it are used as the request or macro name,
1653 the characters following it are used as the arguments to the request or macro.
1654 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: Bd -file"
1656 For security reasons, the
1658 macro does not support the
1661 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1662 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1663 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1664 The argument is ignored including the file name following it.
1665 .It Sy "skipping display without arguments"
1669 block macro does not have any arguments.
1670 The block is discarded, and the block content is displayed in
1671 whatever mode was active before the block.
1672 .It Sy "missing list type, using -item"
1676 macro fails to specify the list type.
1677 .It Sy "missing manual name, using \(dq\(dq"
1681 or any call in the NAME section, lacks the required argument.
1682 .It Sy "uname(3) system call failed, using UNKNOWN"
1686 macro is called without arguments, and the
1691 can be compiled with
1693 .Fl D Cm OSNAME=\(dq\e\(dq Ar string Cm \e\(dq\(dq .
1695 .It Sy "unknown standard specifier"
1699 macro has an unknown argument and is discarded.
1700 .It Sy "skipping request without numeric argument"
1709 statement has a non-numeric or negative argument or no argument at all.
1710 The invalid request or statement is ignored.
1711 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: .so with absolute path or \(dq..\(dq"
1713 For security reasons,
1717 file inclusion requests only with relative paths
1718 and only without ascending to any parent directory.
1719 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1720 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1721 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1723 only shows the path as it appears behind
1725 .It Sy ".so request failed"
1729 request requires reading an external file, but the file could not be
1732 only shows the path as it appears behind
1734 .It Sy "skipping all arguments"
1735 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , roff
1751 macro in a list that don't support item heads, a
1770 block closing request is invoked with at least one argument.
1771 All arguments are ignored.
1772 .It Sy "skipping excess arguments"
1773 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1774 A macro or request is invoked with too many arguments:
1775 .Bl -dash -offset 2n -width 2n -compact
1784 with more than one argument
1787 with another argument after
1793 with more than one argument or with a non-integer argument
1798 family with more than two arguments
1801 with more than three arguments
1804 with more than five arguments
1810 with invalid arguments
1812 The excess arguments are ignored.
1814 .Ss Unsupported features
1816 .It Sy "input too large"
1820 cannot handle input files larger than its arbitrary size limit
1821 of 2^31 bytes (2 Gigabytes).
1822 Since useful manuals are always small, this is not a problem in practice.
1823 Parsing is aborted as soon as the condition is detected.
1824 .It Sy "unsupported control character"
1826 An ASCII control character supported by other
1828 implementations but not by
1830 was found in an input file.
1831 It is replaced by a question mark.
1832 .It Sy "unsupported roff request"
1834 An input file contains a
1836 request supported by GNU troff or Heirloom troff but not by
1838 and it is likely that this will cause information loss
1839 or considerable misformatting.
1840 .It Sy "eqn delim option in tbl"
1842 The options line of a table defines equation delimiters.
1843 Any equation source code contained in the table will be printed unformatted.
1844 .It Sy "unsupported table layout modifier"
1846 A table layout specification contains an
1849 The modifier is discarded.
1850 .It Sy "ignoring macro in table"
1851 .Pq tbl , mdoc , man
1852 A table contains an invocation of an
1856 macro or of an undefined macro.
1857 The macro is ignored, and its arguments are handled
1858 as if they were a text line.
1872 utility first appeared in
1886 utility was written by
1887 .An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv
1888 and is maintained by
1889 .An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org .
git.ckatri.com / mandoc.git / blob