TODO

   1 ************************************************************************
   2 * Official mandoc TODO.
   3 * $Id: TODO,v 1.94 2011/03/22 15:30:30 kristaps Exp $
   4 ************************************************************************
   5
   6 ************************************************************************
   7 * parser bugs
   8 ************************************************************************
   9
  10 - .TP before .SH is still FATAL in man(7)
  11   reported by brad@  Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:54:54 -0500
  12
  13 - the roff parser doesn't tolerate additional characters between
  14   a macro and the \} terminating a conditional block, e.g.
  15   .if n \{
  16   .br \}
  17   reported by ulrich spoerlein  Tue, 19 Oct 2010 20:39:50 +0200
  18
  19 ************************************************************************
  20 * formatter bugs
  21 ************************************************************************
  22
  23 ************************************************************************
  24 * missing features
  25 ************************************************************************
  26
  27 --- missing roff features ----------------------------------------------
  28
  29 - .ad (adjust margins)
  30   .ad l -- adjust left margin only (flush left)
  31   .ad r -- adjust right margin only (flush right)
  32   .ad c -- center text on line
  33   .ad b -- adjust both margins (alias: .ad n)
  34   .na   -- temporarily disable adjustment without changing the mode
  35   .ad   -- re-enable adjustment without changing the mode
  36   Adjustment mode is ignored while in no-fill mode (.nf).
  37
  38 - .it (line traps) occur in mysql(1), yasm_arch(7)
  39   generated by DocBook XSL Stylesheets v1.71.1 <http://docbook.sf.net/>
  40   reported by brad@  Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:48:18 -0500
  41
  42 - .ns (no-space mode) occurs in xine-config(1)
  43   reported by brad@  Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:45:23 -0500
  44
  45 - xloadimage(1) wants .ti (temporary indent), rep by naddy@
  46
  47 - .ta (tab settings) occurs in ircbug(1) and probably gnats(1)
  48   reported by brad@  Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:50:51 -0500
  49
  50 - pod2man expects `tr' to be implemented for \*(-- to work
  51
  52 - \c (interrupted text) occurs in chat(8)
  53
  54 --- missing mdoc features ----------------------------------------------
  55
  56 - fix bad block nesting involving multiple identical explicit blocks
  57   see the OpenBSD mdoc_macro.c 1.47 commit message
  58
  59 - .Bl -column .Xo support is missing
  60   ultimate goal:
  61   restore .Xr and .Dv to
  62   lib/libc/compat-43/sigvec.3
  63   lib/libc/gen/signal.3
  64   lib/libc/sys/sigaction.2
  65
  66 - edge case: decide how to deal with blk_full bad nesting, e.g.
  67   .Sh .Nm .Bk .Nm .Ek .Sh found by jmc@ in ssh-keygen(1)
  68   from jmc@  Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:10:32 +0100
  69
  70 - \\ is now implemented correctly
  71   * when defining strings and macros using .ds and .de
  72   * when parsing roff(7) and man(7) macro arguments
  73   It does not yet work in mdoc(7) macro arguments
  74   because libmdoc does not yet use mandoc_getarg().
  75   Also check what happens in plain text, it must be identical to \e.
  76
  77 - .Bd -filled should not be the same as .Bd -ragged, but align both
  78   the left and right margin.  In groff, it is implemented in terms
  79   of .ad b, which we don't have either.  Found in cksum(1).
  80
  81 - implement blank `Bl -column', such as
  82   .Bl -column
  83   .It foo Ta bar
  84   .El
  85
  86 - explicitly disallow nested `Bl -column', which would clobber internal
  87   flags defined for struct mdoc_macro
  88
  89 - inside `.Bl -column' phrases, punctuation is handled like normal
  90   text, e.g. `.Bl -column .It Fl x . Ta ...' should give "-x -."
  91
  92 - inside `.Bl -column' phrases, TERMP_IGNDELIM handling by `Pf'
  93   is not safe, e.g. `.Bl -column .It Pf a b .' gives "ab."
  94   but should give "ab ."
  95
  96 - set a meaningful default if no `Bl' list type is assigned
  97
  98 - have a blank `It' head for `Bl -tag' not puke
  99
 100 - prohibit `Nm' from having non-text HEAD children
 101   (e.g., NetBSD mDNSShared/dns-sd.1)
 102   (mdoc_html.c and mdoc_term.c `Nm' handlers can be slightly simplified)
 103
 104 --- missing man features -----------------------------------------------
 105
 106 - bashbug(1) complains "line scope broken" after
 107   .SM
 108   .B something
 109   should either just work or be a warning
 110   reported by naddy@
 111
 112 - groff an-ext.tmac macros (.UR, .UE) occur in xine(5)
 113   reported by brad@  Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:45:23 -0500
 114
 115 --- missing tbl features -----------------------------------------------
 116
 117 - implement basic non-parametric .de to support e.g. sox(1)
 118   reported by naddy@ Sat, 16 Oct 2010 23:51:57 +0200
 119   *** sox(1) still doesn't work, tbl(1) errors need investigation
 120
 121 --- missing misc features ----------------------------------------------
 122
 123 - clean up escape sequence handling, creating three classes:
 124   (1) fully implemented, or parsed and ignored without loss of content
 125   (2) unimplemented, potentially causing loss of content
 126       or serious mangling of formatting (e.g. \n) -> ERROR
 127       see textproc/mgdiff(1) for nice examples
 128   (3) undefined, just output the character -> perhaps WARNING
 129
 130 - The \t escape sequence is the same as a literal tab, see for example
 131   the ASCII table in hexdump(1) where
 132     .Bl -column \&000_nu \&001_so \&002_st \&003_et \&004_eo
 133     .It \&000\ nul\t001\ soh\t002\ stx\t003\ etx\t004\ eot\t005\ enq
 134   produces
 135     000 nul  001 soh  002 stx  003 etx  004 eot  005 enq
 136   and the example in oldrdist(1)
 137
 138 - look at pages generated from reStructeredText, e.g. devel/mercurial hg(1)
 139   These are a weird mixture of man(7) and custom autogenerated low-level
 140   roff stuff.  Figure out to what extent we can cope.
 141   For details, see http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html
 142   noted by stsp@  Sat, 24 Apr 2010 09:17:55 +0200
 143   reminded by nicm@  Mon, 3 May 2010 09:52:41 +0100
 144
 145 - check compatibility with Plan9:
 146   http://swtch.com/usr/local/plan9/tmac/tmac.an
 147   http://swtch.com/plan9port/man/man7/man.html
 148   "Anthony J. Bentley" <anthonyjbentley@gmail.com> 28 Dec 2010 21:58:40 -0700
 149
 150 ************************************************************************
 151 * formatting issues: ugly output
 152 ************************************************************************
 153
 154 - a column list with blank `Ta' cells triggers a spurrious
 155   start-with-whitespace printing of a newline
 156
 157 - double quotes inside double quotes are escaped by doubling them
 158   implement this in mdoc(7), too
 159   so far, we only have it in roff(7) and man(7)
 160   reminded by millert@  Thu, 09 Dec 2010 17:29:52 -0500
 161
 162 - perl(1) SYNOPSIS looks bad; reported by deraadt@
 163   1) man(7) seems to need SYNOPSIS .Nm blocks, too
 164
 165 - In .Bl -column,
 166   .It Em Authentication<tab>Key Length
 167   ought to render "Key Length" with emphasis, too,
 168   see OpenBSD iked.conf(5).
 169
 170 - empty phrases in .Bl column produce too few blanks
 171   try e.g. .Bl -column It Ta Ta
 172   reported by millert Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:13:46 -0400
 173
 174 - .%T can have trailing punctuation.  Currently, it puts the trailing
 175   punctuation into a trailing MDOC_TEXT element inside its own scope.
 176   That element should rather be outside its scope, such that the
 177   punctuation does not get underlines.  This is not trivial to
 178   implement because .%T then needs some features of in_line_eoln() -
 179   slurp all arguments into one single text element - and one feature
 180   of in_line() - put trailing punctuation out of scope.
 181   Found in mount_nfs(8) and exports(5), search for "Appendix".
 182
 183 - in enclosures, mandoc sometimes fancies a bogus end of sentence
 184   reminded by jmc@  Thu, 23 Sep 2010 18:13:39 +0059
 185
 186 ************************************************************************
 187 * formatting issues: gratuitious differences
 188 ************************************************************************
 189
 190 - .Rv (and probably .Ex) print different text if an `Nm' has been named
 191   or not (run a manual without `Nm blah' to see this).  I'm not sure
 192   that this exists in the wild, but it's still an error.
 193
 194 - In .Bl -bullet, the groff bullet is "+\b+\bo\bo", the mandoc bullet
 195   is just "o\bo".
 196   see for example OpenBSD ksh(1)
 197
 198 - The characters "|" and "\*(Ba" should never be bold,
 199   not even in the middle of a word, e.g. ".Cm b\*(Bac" in
 200   "mknod [-m mode] name b|c major minor"
 201   in OpenBSD ksh(1)
 202
 203 - A bogus .Pp between two .It must not produce a double blank line,
 204   see between -R and -r in OpenBSD rm(1), before "update" in mount(8),
 205   or in DIAGNOSTICS in init(8), or before "is always true" in ksh(1).
 206   The same happens with .Pp just before .El, see bgpd.conf(5).
 207   Also have `It' complain if `Pp' is invoked at certain times (not
 208   -compact?).
 209
 210 - If the *first* line after .It is .Pp, break the line right after
 211   the tag, do not pad with space characters before breaking.
 212   See the description of the a, c, and i commands in sed(1).
 213
 214 - If the first line after .It is .D1, do not assert a blank line
 215   in between, see for example tmux(1).
 216   reported by nicm@  13 Jan 2011 00:18:57 +0000
 217
 218 - .Nx 1.0a
 219   should be "NetBSD 1.0A", not "NetBSD 1.0a",
 220   see OpenBSD ccdconfig(8).
 221
 222 - In .Bl -tag, if a tag exceeds the right margin and must be continued
 223   on the next line, it must be indented by -width, not width+1;
 224   see "rule block|pass" in OpenBSD ifconfig(8).
 225
 226 - When the -width string contains macros, the macros must be rendered
 227   before measuring the width, for example
 228     .Bl -tag -width ".Dv message"
 229   in magic(5), located in src/usr.bin/file, is the same
 230   as -width 7n, not -width 11n.
 231
 232 - The \& zero-width character counts as output.
 233   That is, when it is alone on a line between two .Pp,
 234   we want three blank lines, not two as in mandoc.
 235
 236 - When .Fn arguments exceed one output line, all but the first
 237   should be indented, see e.g. rpc(3);
 238   reported by jmc@ on discuss@  Fri, 29 Oct 2010 13:48:33 +0100
 239
 240 - .Ns should work when called at the end of an input line, see
 241   the following code in vi(1):
 242     .It Xo
 243     .Op Ar line
 244     .Cm a Ns Op Cm ppend Ns
 245     .Op Cm !\&
 246     .Xc
 247     The input text is appended after the specified line.
 248
 249 - Header lines of excessive length:
 250   Port OpenBSD man_term.c rev. 1.25 to mdoc_term.c
 251   and document it in mdoc(7) and man(7) COMPATIBILITY
 252   found while talking to Chris Bennett
 253
 254 - In man(7), the sequence
 255     .HP
 256     one line of regular text
 257     .SH
 258   should not produce two blank lines before the .SH,
 259   see for example named-checkconf(8).
 260
 261 - In man(7), the sequence
 262     regular text
 263     .RS
 264     .IP
 265   should have a blank line between the text and the beginning of the
 266   indented paragraph, see for example sudo(1).
 267
 268 - At least sometimes, .sp is ignored right after .SH; see named.conf(5).
 269
 270 - trailing whitespace must be ignored even when followed by a font escape,
 271   see for example
 272     makes
 273     \fBdig \fR
 274     operate in batch mode
 275   in dig(1).
 276
 277 ************************************************************************
 278 * error reporting issues
 279 ************************************************************************
 280
 281 ************************************************************************
 282 * performance issues
 283 ************************************************************************
 284
 285 Several areas can be cleaned up to make mandoc even faster.  These are
 286
 287 - improve hashing mechanism for macros (quite important: performance)
 288
 289 - improve hashing mechanism for characters (not as important)
 290
 291 - the PDF file is HUGE: this can be reduced by using relative offsets
 292
 293 ************************************************************************
 294 * structural issues
 295 ************************************************************************
 296
 297 - Find better ways to prevent endless loops
 298   in roff(7) macro and string expansion.
 299
 300 - Clean up date handling.
 301   Store dates as strings, not time numbers.
 302   When the format is not recognized, just use the string from the input.
 303   When the format is recognized, normalize the string to whatever
 304   format is standard at the respective place.
 305   Decide which formats should be recognized where.
 306   Update both mdoc(7) and man(7) documentation.
 307   Triggered by  Tim van der Molen  Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:30:45 +0100