1 .\" $Id: mandoc.1,v 1.189 2017/05/30 19:30:38 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: May 30 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.
170 to exit after parsing a file that causes warnings or errors of at least
172 No formatted output will be produced from that file.
177 are requested, they can be joined with a comma, for example
178 .Fl W Cm error , Ns Cm stop .
180 Read input from zero or more files.
181 If unspecified, reads from stdin.
182 If multiple files are specified,
184 will halt with the first failed parse.
189 are also supported and are documented in man(1).
196 also supports the options
203 are mutually exclusive and override each other.
207 utility accepts the following
209 arguments, which correspond to output modes:
210 .Bl -tag -width "-T markdown"
212 Produce 7-bit ASCII output.
216 Produce HTML5, CSS1, and MathML output.
220 Parse only: produce no output.
224 Encode output using the current locale.
239 .Sx Markdown Output .
245 Produce PostScript output.
247 .Sx PostScript Output .
249 Produce an indented parse tree.
251 .Sx Syntax tree output .
253 Encode output in the UTF\-8 multi-byte format.
258 If multiple input files are specified, these will be processed by the
259 corresponding filter in-order.
263 is rendered in standard 7-bit ASCII documented in
266 Font styles are applied by using back-spaced encoding such that an
270 .Sq _ Ns \e[bs] Ns c ,
273 is the back-space character number 8.
274 Emboldened characters are rendered as
275 .Sq c Ns \e[bs] Ns c .
277 The special characters documented in
279 are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent.
281 Output width is limited to 78 visible columns unless literal input lines
286 arguments are accepted:
288 .It Cm indent Ns = Ns Ar indent
289 The left margin for normal text is set to
291 blank characters instead of the default of five for
295 Increasing this is not recommended; it may result in degraded formatting,
296 for example overfull lines or ugly line breaks.
297 .It Cm width Ns = Ns Ar width
298 The output width is set to
300 which will normalise to \(>=58.
305 conforms to HTML5 using optional self-closing tags.
306 Default styles use only CSS1.
307 Equations rendered from
313 file documents style-sheet classes available for customising output.
314 If a style-sheet is not specified with
317 defaults to simple output (via an embedded style-sheet)
318 readable in any graphical or text-based web
321 Special characters are rendered in decimal-encoded UTF\-8.
325 arguments are accepted:
328 Omit the <!DOCTYPE> declaration and the <html>, <head>, and <body>
329 elements and only emit the subtree below the <body> element.
332 argument will be ignored.
333 This is useful when embedding manual content within existing documents.
334 .It Cm includes Ns = Ns Ar fmt
339 is used as a template for linked header files (usually via the
344 are replaced with the include filename.
345 The default is not to present a
347 .It Cm man Ns = Ns Ar fmt
351 .Ar ../html%S/%N.%S.html ,
352 is used as a template for linked manuals (usually via the
359 are replaced with the linked manual's name and section, respectively.
360 If no section is included, section 1 is assumed.
361 The default is not to
363 .It Cm style Ns = Ns Ar style.css
366 is used for an external style-sheet.
367 This must be a valid absolute or
371 Locale-depending output encoding is triggered with
375 This option is not available on all systems: systems without locale
376 support, or those whose internal representation is not natively UCS-4,
381 for font style specification and available command-line arguments.
383 Translate input format into
386 This is useful for distributing manual sources to legacy systems
393 is passed as input, it is translated into
395 If the input format is
397 the input is copied to the output, expanding any
401 The parser is also run, and as usual, the
405 are displayed before copying the input to the output.
412 .Lk http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax.text\
413 "John Gruber's 2004 specification" .
414 The output also almost conforms to the
415 .Lk http://commonmark.org/ CommonMark
418 The character set used for the markdown output is ASCII.
419 Non-ASCII characters are encoded as HTML entities.
420 Since that is not possible in literal font contexts, because these
421 are rendered as code spans and code blocks in the markdown output,
422 non-ASCII characters are transliterated to ASCII approximations in
425 Markdown is a very weak markup language, so all semantic markup is
426 lost, and even part of the presentational markup may be lost.
427 Do not use this as an intermediate step in converting to HTML;
437 input languages are not supported by
441 PDF-1.1 output may be generated by
444 .Sx PostScript Output
447 arguments and defaults.
448 .Ss PostScript Output
451 Level-2 pages may be generated by
453 Output pages default to letter sized and are rendered in the Times font
455 Margins are calculated as 1/9 the page length and width.
458 Special characters are rendered as in
463 arguments are accepted:
465 .It Cm paper Ns = Ns Ar name
475 You may also manually specify dimensions as
477 width by height in millimetres.
478 If an unknown value is encountered,
485 to force a UTF\-8 locale.
488 for details and options.
489 .Ss Syntax tree output
492 to show a human readable representation of the syntax tree.
493 It is useful for debugging the source code of manual pages.
494 The exact format is subject to change, so don't write parsers for it.
496 The first paragraph shows meta data found in the
501 line, or the fallbacks used.
503 In the tree dump, each output line shows one syntax tree node.
504 Child nodes are indented with respect to their parent node.
509 For macro nodes, the macro name; for text and
512 There is a special format for
516 Node type (text, elem, block, head, body, body-end, tail, tbl, eqn).
521 An opening parenthesis if the node is an opening delimiter.
523 An asterisk if the node starts a new input line.
525 The input line number (starting at one).
529 The input column number (starting at one).
531 A closing parenthesis if the node is a closing delimiter.
533 A full stop if the node ends a sentence.
535 BROKEN if the node is a block broken by another block.
537 NOSRC if the node is not in the input file,
538 but automatically generated from macros.
540 NOPRT if the node is not supposed to generate output
541 for any output format.
547 argument is accepted:
550 Skip validation and show the unvalidated syntax tree.
551 This can help to find out whether a given behaviour is caused by
552 the parser or by the validator.
553 Meta data is not available in this case.
556 .Bl -tag -width MANPAGER
558 Any non-empty value of the environment variable
560 is used instead of the standard pagination program,
571 Specifies the pagination program to use when
574 If neither PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined,
587 utility exits with one of the following values, controlled by the message
593 .Bl -tag -width Ds -compact
595 No style suggestions, warnings or errors occurred, or those that
596 did were ignored because they were lower than the requested
599 At least one style suggestion occurred, but no warning or error, and
603 At least one warning occurred, but no error, and
609 At least one parsing error occurred,
610 but no unsupported feature was encountered, and
616 At least one unsupported feature was encountered, and
622 Invalid command line arguments were specified.
623 No input files have been read.
625 An operating system error occurred, for example exhaustion
626 of memory, file descriptors, or process table entries.
629 to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file.
637 To page manuals to the terminal:
639 .Dl $ mandoc -l mandoc.1 man.1 apropos.1 makewhatis.8
641 To produce HTML manuals with
645 .Dl $ mandoc \-T html -O style=mandoc.css mdoc.7 \*(Gt mdoc.7.html
647 To check over a large set of manuals:
649 .Dl $ mandoc \-T lint \(gafind /usr/src -name \e*\e.[1-9]\(ga
651 To produce a series of PostScript manuals for A4 paper:
653 .Dl $ mandoc \-T ps \-O paper=a4 mdoc.7 man.7 \*(Gt manuals.ps
659 format, for use on systems lacking an
663 .Dl $ mandoc \-T man foo.mdoc \*(Gt foo.man
665 Messages displayed by
669 .D1 Nm Ns : Ar file : Ns Ar line : Ns Ar column : level : message : macro args
671 Line and column numbers start at 1.
672 Both are omitted for messages referring to an input file as a whole.
673 Macro names and arguments are omitted where meaningless.
674 Fatal messages about invalid command line arguments
675 or operating system errors, for example when memory is exhausted,
682 Message levels have the following meanings:
683 .Bl -tag -width "warning"
685 An input file uses unsupported low-level
688 The output may be incomplete and/or misformatted,
689 so using GNU troff instead of
691 to process the file may be preferable.
693 An input file contains invalid syntax that cannot be safely interpreted.
694 By discarding part of the input or inserting missing tokens,
695 the parser is able to continue, and the error does not prevent
696 generation of formatted output, but typically, preparing that
697 output involves information loss, broken document structure
698 or unintended formatting, no matter whether
700 or GNU troff is used.
701 In many cases, the output of
703 and GNU troff is identical, but in some,
705 is more resilient than GNU troff with respect to malformed input.
707 Non-existent or unreadable input files are also reported on the
710 In that case, the parser cannot even be started and no output
711 is produced from those input files.
713 An input file uses obsolete, discouraged or non-portable syntax.
714 All the same, the meaning of the input is unambiguous and a correct
715 rendering can be produced.
716 Documents causing warnings may render poorly when using other
717 formatting tools instead of
720 An input file uses dubious or discouraged style.
721 This is not a complaint about the syntax, and probably neither
722 formatting nor portability are in danger.
723 While great care is taken to avoid false positives on the higher
726 level tries to reduce the probability that issues go unnoticed,
727 so it may occasionally issue bogus suggestions.
728 Please use your good judgement to decide whether any particular
730 suggestion really justifies a change to the input file.
739 levels except those about non-existent or unreadable input files
740 are hidden unless their level, or a lower level, is requested using a
747 .It Sy "useless macro"
755 Simply delete it, it serves no useful purpose.
757 .Ss Warnings related to the document prologue
759 .It Sy "missing manual title, using UNTITLED"
763 macro has no arguments, or there is no
765 macro before the first non-prologue macro.
766 .It Sy "missing manual title, using \(dq\(dq"
770 macro, or it has no arguments.
771 .It Sy "lower case character in document title"
773 The title is still used as given in the
778 .It Sy "missing manual section, using \(dq\(dq"
784 macro lacks the mandatory section argument.
785 .It Sy "unknown manual section"
787 The section number in a
789 line is invalid, but still used.
790 .It Sy "missing date, using today's date"
792 The document was parsed as
798 macro has no arguments or only empty arguments;
799 or the document was parsed as
805 macro has less than three arguments or its third argument is empty.
806 .It Sy "cannot parse date, using it verbatim"
812 macro does not follow the conventional format.
813 .It Sy "missing Os macro, using \(dq\(dq"
815 The default or current system is not shown in this case.
816 .It Sy "duplicate prologue macro"
818 One of the prologue macros occurs more than once.
819 The last instance overrides all previous ones.
820 .It Sy "late prologue macro"
826 macro occurs after some non-prologue macro, but still takes effect.
827 .It Sy "skipping late title macro"
831 macro appears after the first non-prologue macro.
832 Traditional formatters cannot handle this because
833 they write the page header before parsing the document body.
834 Even though this technical restriction does not apply to
836 traditional semantics is preserved.
837 The late macro is discarded including its arguments.
838 .It Sy "prologue macros out of order"
840 The prologue macros are not given in the conventional order
844 All three macros are used even when given in another order.
846 .Ss Warnings regarding document structure
848 .It Sy ".so is fragile, better use ln(1)"
850 Including files only works when the parser program runs with the correct
851 current working directory.
852 .It Sy "no document body"
854 The document body contains neither text nor macros.
855 An empty document is shown, consisting only of a header and a footer line.
856 .It Sy "content before first section header"
858 Some macros or text precede the first
863 The offending macros and text are parsed and added to the top level
864 of the syntax tree, outside any section block.
865 .It Sy "first section is not NAME"
867 The argument of the first
875 .It Sy "NAME section without Nm before Nd"
877 The NAME section does not contain any
879 child macro before the first
882 .It Sy "NAME section without description"
884 The NAME section lacks the mandatory
887 .It Sy "description not at the end of NAME"
889 The NAME section does contain an
891 child macro, but other content follows it.
892 .It Sy "bad NAME section content"
894 The NAME section contains plain text or macros other than
898 .It Sy "missing comma before name"
900 The NAME section contains an
902 macro that is neither the first one nor preceded by a comma.
903 .It Sy "missing description line, using \(dq\(dq"
907 macro lacks the required argument.
908 The title line of the manual will end after the dash.
909 .It Sy "description line outside NAME section"
913 macro appears outside the NAME section.
914 The arguments are printed anyway and the following text is used for
916 but none of that behaviour is portable.
917 .It Sy "sections out of conventional order"
919 A standard section occurs after another section it usually precedes.
920 All section titles are used as given,
921 and the order of sections is not changed.
922 .It Sy "duplicate section title"
924 The same standard section title occurs more than once.
925 .It Sy "unexpected section"
927 A standard section header occurs in a section of the manual
928 where it normally isn't useful.
929 .It Sy "unusual Xr order"
931 In the SEE ALSO section, an
933 macro with a lower section number follows one with a higher number,
936 macros referring to the same section are out of alphabetical order.
937 .It Sy "unusual Xr punctuation"
939 In the SEE ALSO section, punctuation between two
941 macros differs from a single comma, or there is trailing punctuation
945 .It Sy "AUTHORS section without An macro"
947 An AUTHORS sections contains no
949 macros, or only empty ones.
950 Probably, there are author names lacking markup.
952 .Ss "Warnings related to macros and nesting"
954 .It Sy "obsolete macro"
958 manual for replacements.
959 .It Sy "macro neither callable nor escaped"
961 The name of a macro that is not callable appears on a macro line.
962 It is printed verbatim.
963 If the intention is to call it, move it to its own input line;
964 otherwise, escape it by prepending
966 .It Sy "skipping paragraph macro"
969 documents, this happens
972 at the beginning and end of sections and subsections
974 right before non-compact lists and displays
976 at the end of items in non-column, non-compact lists
978 and for multiple consecutive paragraph macros.
982 documents, it happens
994 macros having neither head nor body arguments
1005 .It Sy "moving paragraph macro out of list"
1009 list contains a trailing paragraph macro.
1010 The paragraph macro is moved after the end of the list.
1011 .It Sy "skipping no-space macro"
1013 An input line begins with an
1016 The macro is ignored.
1017 .It Sy "blocks badly nested"
1019 If two blocks intersect, one should completely contain the other.
1020 Otherwise, rendered output is likely to look strange in any output
1021 format, and rendering in SGML-based output formats is likely to be
1022 outright wrong because such languages do not support badly nested
1024 Typical examples of badly nested blocks are
1025 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bo \&Ac \&Bc
1027 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bq \&Ac .
1035 .It Sy "nested displays are not portable"
1042 display occurs nested inside another
1047 but fails with most other implementations.
1048 .It Sy "moving content out of list"
1052 list block contains text or macros before the first
1055 The offending children are moved before the beginning of the list.
1056 .It Sy "fill mode already enabled, skipping"
1060 request occurs even though the document is still in fill mode,
1061 or already switched back to fill mode.
1063 .It Sy "fill mode already disabled, skipping"
1067 request occurs even though the document already switched to no-fill mode
1068 and did not switch back to fill mode yet.
1070 .It Sy "line scope broken"
1072 While parsing the next-line scope of the previous macro,
1073 another macro is found that prematurely terminates the previous one.
1074 The previous, interrupted macro is deleted from the parse tree.
1076 .Ss "Warnings related to missing arguments"
1078 .It Sy "skipping empty request"
1080 The macro name is missing from a macro definition request,
1083 control statement or operation keyword lacks its required argument.
1084 .It Sy "conditional request controls empty scope"
1086 A conditional request is only useful if any of the following
1087 follows it on the same logical input line:
1092 keyword to open a multi-line scope.
1094 A request or macro or some text, resulting in a single-line scope.
1096 The immediate end of the logical line without any intervening whitespace,
1097 resulting in next-line scope.
1099 Here, a conditional request is followed by trailing whitespace only,
1100 and there is no other content on its logical input line.
1101 Note that it doesn't matter whether the logical input line is split
1102 across multiple physical input lines using
1104 line continuation characters.
1105 This is one of the rare cases
1106 where trailing whitespace is syntactically significant.
1107 The conditional request controls a scope containing whitespace only,
1108 so it is unlikely to have a significant effect,
1109 except that it may control a following
1112 .It Sy "skipping empty macro"
1114 The indicated macro has no arguments and hence no effect.
1115 .It Sy "empty block"
1126 block contains nothing in its body and will produce no output.
1127 .It Sy "empty argument, using 0n"
1129 The required width is missing after
1136 .It Sy "missing display type, using -ragged"
1140 macro is invoked without the required display type.
1141 .It Sy "list type is not the first argument"
1145 macro, at least one other argument precedes the type argument.
1148 utility copes with any argument order, but some other
1150 implementations do not.
1151 .It Sy "missing -width in -tag list, using 8n"
1160 .It Sy "missing utility name, using \(dq\(dq"
1164 macro is called without an argument before
1166 has first been called with an argument.
1167 .It Sy "missing function name, using \(dq\(dq"
1171 macro is called without an argument.
1172 No function name is printed.
1173 .It Sy "empty head in list item"
1185 macro lacks the required argument.
1186 The item head is left empty.
1187 .It Sy "empty list item"
1199 An empty list item is shown.
1200 .It Sy "missing font type, using \efR"
1204 macro has no argument.
1205 It switches to the default font.
1206 .It Sy "unknown font type, using \efR"
1210 argument is invalid.
1211 The default font is used instead.
1212 .It Sy "nothing follows prefix"
1216 macro has no argument, or only one argument and no macro follows
1217 on the same input line.
1218 This defeats its purpose; in particular, spacing is not suppressed
1219 before the text or macros following on the next input line.
1220 .It Sy "empty reference block"
1224 macro is immediately followed by an
1226 macro on the next input line.
1227 Such an empty block does not produce any output.
1228 .It Sy "missing section argument"
1232 macro lacks its second, section number argument.
1233 The first argument, i.e. the name, is printed, but without subsequent
1235 .It Sy "missing -std argument, adding it"
1241 macro lacks the required
1248 even when it is not specified, but other implementations may not.
1249 .It Sy "missing option string, using \(dq\(dq"
1253 macro is invoked without any argument.
1254 An empty pair of square brackets is shown.
1255 .It Sy "missing resource identifier, using \(dq\(dq"
1259 macro is invoked without any argument.
1260 An empty pair of angle brackets is shown.
1261 .It Sy "missing eqn box, using \(dq\(dq"
1263 A diacritic mark or a binary operator is found,
1264 but there is nothing to the left of it.
1265 An empty box is inserted.
1267 .Ss "Warnings related to bad macro arguments"
1269 .It Sy "unterminated quoted argument"
1271 Macro arguments can be enclosed in double quote characters
1272 such that space characters and macro names contained in the quoted
1273 argument need not be escaped.
1274 The closing quote of the last argument of a macro can be omitted.
1275 However, omitting it is not recommended because it makes the code
1277 .It Sy "duplicate argument"
1283 macro has more than one
1290 All but the last instances of these arguments are ignored.
1291 .It Sy "skipping duplicate argument"
1295 macro has more than one
1300 All but the first of these arguments are ignored.
1301 .It Sy "skipping duplicate display type"
1305 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1306 .It Sy "skipping duplicate list type"
1310 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1311 .It Sy "skipping -width argument"
1325 .It Sy "wrong number of cells"
1328 list, the number of tabs or
1330 macros is less than the number expected from the list header line
1331 or exceeds the expected number by more than one.
1332 Missing cells remain empty, and all cells exceeding the number of
1333 columns are joined into one single cell.
1334 .It Sy "unknown AT&T UNIX version"
1338 macro has an invalid argument.
1339 It is used verbatim, with
1342 .It Sy "comma in function argument"
1348 macro contains a comma; it should probably be split into two arguments.
1349 .It Sy "parenthesis in function name"
1351 The first argument of an
1355 macro contains an opening or closing parenthesis; that's probably wrong,
1356 parentheses are added automatically.
1357 .It Sy "invalid content in Rs block"
1361 block contains plain text or non-% macros.
1362 The bogus content is left in the syntax tree.
1363 Formatting may be poor.
1364 .It Sy "invalid Boolean argument"
1368 macro has an argument other than
1372 The invalid argument is moved out of the macro, which leaves the macro
1373 empty, causing it to toggle the spacing mode.
1374 .It Sy "unknown font, skipping request"
1382 layout modifier has an unknown
1385 .It Sy "odd number of characters in request"
1389 request contains an odd number of characters.
1390 The last character is mapped to the blank character.
1392 .Ss "Warnings related to plain text"
1394 .It Sy "blank line in fill mode, using .sp"
1396 The meaning of blank input lines is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1397 In fill mode, line breaks of text input lines are not supposed to be
1399 However, for compatibility with groff, blank lines in fill mode
1403 .It Sy "tab in filled text"
1405 The meaning of tab characters is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1406 In fill mode, whitespace is not supposed to be significant
1407 on text input lines.
1408 As an implementation dependent choice, tab characters on text lines
1409 are passed through to the formatters in any case.
1410 Given that the text before the tab character will be filled,
1411 it is hard to predict which tab stop position the tab will advance to.
1412 .It Sy "whitespace at end of input line"
1413 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1414 Whitespace at the end of input lines is almost never semantically
1415 significant \(em but in the odd case where it might be, it is
1416 extremely confusing when reviewing and maintaining documents.
1417 .It Sy "new sentence, new line"
1419 A new sentence starts in the middle of a text line.
1420 Start it on a new input line to help formatters produce correct spacing.
1421 .It Sy "bad comment style"
1423 Comment lines start with a dot, a backslash, and a double-quote character.
1426 utility treats the line as a comment line even without the backslash,
1427 but leaving out the backslash might not be portable.
1428 .It Sy "invalid escape sequence"
1430 An escape sequence has an invalid opening argument delimiter, lacks the
1431 closing argument delimiter, or the argument has too few characters.
1432 If the argument is incomplete,
1436 expand to an empty string,
1442 to the length of the incomplete argument.
1443 All other invalid escape sequences are ignored.
1444 .It Sy "undefined string, using \(dq\(dq"
1446 If a string is used without being defined before,
1447 its value is implicitly set to the empty string.
1448 However, defining strings explicitly before use
1449 keeps the code more readable.
1451 .Ss "Warnings related to tables"
1453 .It Sy "tbl line starts with span"
1455 The first cell in a table layout line is a horizontal span
1457 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1458 .It Sy "tbl column starts with span"
1460 The first line of a table layout specification
1461 requests a vertical span
1463 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1464 .It Sy "skipping vertical bar in tbl layout"
1466 A table layout specification contains more than two consecutive vertical bars.
1467 A double bar is printed, all additional bars are discarded.
1469 .Ss "Errors related to tables"
1471 .It Sy "non-alphabetic character in tbl options"
1473 The table options line contains a character other than a letter,
1474 blank, or comma where the beginning of an option name is expected.
1475 The character is ignored.
1476 .It Sy "skipping unknown tbl option"
1478 The table options line contains a string of letters that does not
1479 match any known option name.
1480 The word is ignored.
1481 .It Sy "missing tbl option argument"
1483 A table option that requires an argument is not followed by an
1484 opening parenthesis, or the opening parenthesis is immediately
1485 followed by a closing parenthesis.
1486 The option is ignored.
1487 .It Sy "wrong tbl option argument size"
1489 A table option argument contains an invalid number of characters.
1490 Both the option and the argument are ignored.
1491 .It Sy "empty tbl layout"
1493 A table layout specification is completely empty,
1494 specifying zero lines and zero columns.
1495 As a fallback, a single left-justified column is used.
1496 .It Sy "invalid character in tbl layout"
1498 A table layout specification contains a character that can neither
1499 be interpreted as a layout key character nor as a layout modifier,
1500 or a modifier precedes the first key.
1501 The invalid character is discarded.
1502 .It Sy "unmatched parenthesis in tbl layout"
1504 A table layout specification contains an opening parenthesis,
1505 but no matching closing parenthesis.
1506 The rest of the input line, starting from the parenthesis, has no effect.
1507 .It Sy "tbl without any data cells"
1509 A table does not contain any data cells.
1510 It will probably produce no output.
1511 .It Sy "ignoring data in spanned tbl cell"
1513 A table cell is marked as a horizontal span
1517 in the table layout, but it contains data.
1518 The data is ignored.
1519 .It Sy "ignoring extra tbl data cells"
1521 A data line contains more cells than the corresponding layout line.
1522 The data in the extra cells is ignored.
1523 .It Sy "data block open at end of tbl"
1525 A data block is opened with
1527 but never closed with a matching
1529 The remaining data lines of the table are all put into one cell,
1530 and any remaining cells stay empty.
1532 .Ss "Errors related to roff, mdoc, and man code"
1534 .It Sy "input stack limit exceeded, infinite loop?"
1536 Explicit recursion limits are implemented for the following features,
1537 in order to prevent infinite loops:
1540 expansion of nested escape sequences
1541 including expansion of strings and number registers,
1543 expansion of nested user-defined macros,
1549 When a limit is hit, the output is incorrect, typically losing
1550 some content, but the parser can continue.
1551 .It Sy "skipping bad character"
1552 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1553 The input file contains a byte that is not a printable
1556 The message mentions the character number.
1557 The offending byte is replaced with a question mark
1559 Consider editing the input file to replace the byte with an ASCII
1560 transliteration of the intended character.
1561 .It Sy "skipping unknown macro"
1562 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1563 The first identifier on a request or macro line is neither recognized as a
1565 request, nor as a user-defined macro, nor, respectively, as an
1570 It may be mistyped or unsupported.
1571 The request or macro is discarded including its arguments.
1572 .It Sy "skipping insecure request"
1574 An input file attempted to run a shell command
1575 or to read or write an external file.
1576 Such attempts are denied for security reasons.
1577 .It Sy "skipping item outside list"
1581 macro occurs outside any
1586 delimiter occurs outside any pile.
1587 It is discarded including its arguments.
1588 .It Sy "skipping column outside column list"
1592 macro occurs outside any
1595 It is discarded including its arguments.
1596 .It Sy "skipping end of block that is not open"
1597 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1598 Various syntax elements can only be used to explicitly close blocks
1599 that have previously been opened.
1602 block closing macro, a
1609 right delimiter or closing brace, or the end of an equation, table, or
1611 conditional request is encountered but no matching block is open.
1612 The offending request or macro is discarded.
1613 .It Sy "fewer RS blocks open, skipping"
1617 macro is invoked with an argument, but less than the specified number of
1623 .It Sy "inserting missing end of block"
1627 macros as well as tables require explicit closing by dedicated macros.
1628 A block that doesn't support bad nesting
1629 ends before all of its children are properly closed.
1630 The open child nodes are closed implicitly.
1631 .It Sy "appending missing end of block"
1632 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1633 At the end of the document, an explicit
1641 block, an equation, table, or
1643 conditional or ignore block is still open.
1644 The open block is closed implicitly.
1645 .It Sy "escaped character not allowed in a name"
1647 Macro, string and register identifiers consist of printable,
1648 non-whitespace ASCII characters.
1649 Escape sequences and characters and strings expressed in terms of them
1650 cannot form part of a name.
1651 The first argument of an
1659 request, or any argument of an
1661 request, or the name of a request or user defined macro being called,
1662 is terminated by an escape sequence.
1668 the request has no effect at all.
1675 what was parsed up to this point is used as the arguments to the request,
1676 and the rest of the input line is discarded including the escape sequence.
1677 When parsing for a request or a user-defined macro name to be called,
1678 only the escape sequence is discarded.
1679 The characters preceding it are used as the request or macro name,
1680 the characters following it are used as the arguments to the request or macro.
1681 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: Bd -file"
1683 For security reasons, the
1685 macro does not support the
1688 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1689 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1690 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1691 The argument is ignored including the file name following it.
1692 .It Sy "skipping display without arguments"
1696 block macro does not have any arguments.
1697 The block is discarded, and the block content is displayed in
1698 whatever mode was active before the block.
1699 .It Sy "missing list type, using -item"
1703 macro fails to specify the list type.
1704 .It Sy "missing manual name, using \(dq\(dq"
1708 or any call in the NAME section, lacks the required argument.
1709 .It Sy "uname(3) system call failed, using UNKNOWN"
1713 macro is called without arguments, and the
1718 can be compiled with
1720 .Fl D Cm OSNAME=\(dq\e\(dq Ar string Cm \e\(dq\(dq .
1722 .It Sy "unknown standard specifier"
1726 macro has an unknown argument and is discarded.
1727 .It Sy "skipping request without numeric argument"
1736 statement has a non-numeric or negative argument or no argument at all.
1737 The invalid request or statement is ignored.
1738 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: .so with absolute path or \(dq..\(dq"
1740 For security reasons,
1744 file inclusion requests only with relative paths
1745 and only without ascending to any parent directory.
1746 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1747 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1748 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1750 only shows the path as it appears behind
1752 .It Sy ".so request failed"
1756 request requires reading an external file, but the file could not be
1759 only shows the path as it appears behind
1761 .It Sy "skipping all arguments"
1762 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , roff
1778 macro in a list that don't support item heads, a
1797 block closing request is invoked with at least one argument.
1798 All arguments are ignored.
1799 .It Sy "skipping excess arguments"
1800 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1801 A macro or request is invoked with too many arguments:
1802 .Bl -dash -offset 2n -width 2n -compact
1811 with more than one argument
1814 with another argument after
1820 with more than one argument or with a non-integer argument
1825 family with more than two arguments
1828 with more than three arguments
1831 with more than five arguments
1837 with invalid arguments
1839 The excess arguments are ignored.
1841 .Ss Unsupported features
1843 .It Sy "input too large"
1847 cannot handle input files larger than its arbitrary size limit
1848 of 2^31 bytes (2 Gigabytes).
1849 Since useful manuals are always small, this is not a problem in practice.
1850 Parsing is aborted as soon as the condition is detected.
1851 .It Sy "unsupported control character"
1853 An ASCII control character supported by other
1855 implementations but not by
1857 was found in an input file.
1858 It is replaced by a question mark.
1859 .It Sy "unsupported roff request"
1861 An input file contains a
1863 request supported by GNU troff or Heirloom troff but not by
1865 and it is likely that this will cause information loss
1866 or considerable misformatting.
1867 .It Sy "eqn delim option in tbl"
1869 The options line of a table defines equation delimiters.
1870 Any equation source code contained in the table will be printed unformatted.
1871 .It Sy "unsupported table layout modifier"
1873 A table layout specification contains an
1876 The modifier is discarded.
1877 .It Sy "ignoring macro in table"
1878 .Pq tbl , mdoc , man
1879 A table contains an invocation of an
1883 macro or of an undefined macro.
1884 The macro is ignored, and its arguments are handled
1885 as if they were a text line.
1899 utility first appeared in
1913 utility was written by
1914 .An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv
1915 and is maintained by
1916 .An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org .
git.ckatri.com / mandoc.git / blob