1 .\" $Id: mandoc.1,v 1.153 2015/02/16 16:23:54 schwarze Exp $
3 .\" Copyright (c) 2009, 2010, 2011 Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv>
4 .\" Copyright (c) 2012, 2014, 2015 Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>
6 .\" Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
7 .\" purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
8 .\" copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
10 .\" THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
11 .\" WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
12 .\" MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
13 .\" ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
14 .\" WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
15 .\" ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
16 .\" OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
18 .Dd $Mdocdate: February 16 2015 $
23 .Nd format and display UNIX manuals
28 .Op Fl I Cm os Li = Ar name
30 .Op Fl K Ns Ar encoding
41 manual pages for display.
49 text from stdin, implying
55 The options are as follows:
58 If the standard output is a terminal device and
62 to paginate the output, just like
66 Copy the formatted manual pages to the standard output without using
70 It can be specified to override
75 This overrides any earlier
81 .It Fl I Cm os Li = Ar name
83 Override the default operating system
93 Display only the SYNOPSIS lines.
96 .It Fl K Ns Ar encoding
97 Specify the input encoding.
105 If not specified, autodetection uses the first match:
106 .Bl -tag -width iso-8859-1
108 if the first three bytes of the input file
109 are the UTF-8 byte order mark (BOM, 0xefbbbf)
111 if the first or second line of the input file matches the
115 .D1 .\e" -*- Oo ...; Oc coding: Ar encoding ; No -*-
117 if the first non-ASCII byte in the file introduces a valid UTF-8 sequence
124 This overrides any earlier
132 Also reverts any earlier
137 .It Fl m Ns Ar format
141 for available formats.
144 .It Fl O Ns Ar option
145 Comma-separated output options.
146 .It Fl T Ns Ar output
150 for available formats.
154 Specify the minimum message
156 to be reported on the standard error output and to affect the exit status.
180 to exit after parsing a file that causes warnings or errors of at least
182 No formatted output will be produced from that file.
187 are requested, they can be joined with a comma, for example
188 .Fl W Ns Cm error , Ns Cm stop .
190 Read input from zero or more files.
191 If unspecified, reads from stdin.
192 If multiple files are specified,
194 will halt with the first failed parse.
203 also supports the options
226 should only be used for legacy manuals.
230 which is also the default, determines encoding on-the-fly: if the first
237 parser is used; otherwise, the
242 files are specified with
244 each has its file-type determined this way.
245 If multiple files are
250 is specified, then this format is used exclusively.
254 utility accepts the following
256 arguments, which correspond to output modes:
257 .Bl -tag -width "-Tlocale"
259 Produce 7-bit ASCII output.
263 Produce HTML5, CSS1, and MathML output.
267 Parse only: produce no output.
269 .Fl W Ns Cm warning .
270 .It Fl T Ns Cm locale
271 Encode output using the current locale.
286 Produce PostScript output.
288 .Sx PostScript Output .
290 Produce an indented parse tree.
292 Encode output in the UTF\-8 multi-byte format.
296 This is a synonym for
300 If multiple input files are specified, these will be processed by the
301 corresponding filter in-order.
305 is rendered in standard 7-bit ASCII documented in
308 Font styles are applied by using back-spaced encoding such that an
312 .Sq _ Ns \e[bs] Ns c ,
315 is the back-space character number 8.
316 Emboldened characters are rendered as
317 .Sq c Ns \e[bs] Ns c .
319 The special characters documented in
321 are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent.
323 Output width is limited to 78 visible columns unless literal input lines
328 arguments are accepted:
330 .It Cm indent Ns = Ns Ar indent
331 The left margin for normal text is set to
333 blank characters instead of the default of five for
337 Increasing this is not recommended; it may result in degraded formatting,
338 for example overfull lines or ugly line breaks.
339 .It Cm width Ns = Ns Ar width
340 The output width is set to
342 which will normalise to \(>=58.
347 conforms to HTML5 using optional self-closing tags.
348 Default styles use only CSS1.
349 Equations rendered from
354 .Pa example.style.css
355 file documents style-sheet classes available for customising output.
356 If a style-sheet is not specified with
359 defaults to simple output (via an embedded style-sheet)
360 readable in any graphical or text-based web
363 Special characters are rendered in decimal-encoded UTF\-8.
367 arguments are accepted:
370 Omit the <!DOCTYPE> declaration and the <html>, <head>, and <body>
371 elements and only emit the subtree below the <body> element.
374 argument will be ignored.
375 This is useful when embedding manual content within existing documents.
376 .It Cm includes Ns = Ns Ar fmt
381 is used as a template for linked header files (usually via the
386 are replaced with the include filename.
387 The default is not to present a
389 .It Cm man Ns = Ns Ar fmt
393 .Ar ../html%S/%N.%S.html ,
394 is used as a template for linked manuals (usually via the
401 are replaced with the linked manual's name and section, respectively.
402 If no section is included, section 1 is assumed.
403 The default is not to
405 .It Cm style Ns = Ns Ar style.css
408 is used for an external style-sheet.
409 This must be a valid absolute or
413 Locale-depending output encoding is triggered with
417 This option is not available on all systems: systems without locale
418 support, or those whose internal representation is not natively UCS-4,
423 for font style specification and available command-line arguments.
425 Translate input format into
428 This is useful for distributing manual sources to legacy systems
435 is passed as input, it is translated into
437 If the input format is
439 the input is copied to the output, expanding any
443 The parser is also run, and as usual, the
447 are displayed before copying the input to the output.
449 PDF-1.1 output may be generated by
452 .Sx PostScript Output
455 arguments and defaults.
456 .Ss PostScript Output
459 Level-2 pages may be generated by
461 Output pages default to letter sized and are rendered in the Times font
463 Margins are calculated as 1/9 the page length and width.
466 Special characters are rendered as in
471 arguments are accepted:
473 .It Cm paper Ns = Ns Ar name
483 You may also manually specify dimensions as
485 width by height in millimetres.
486 If an unknown value is encountered,
493 to force a UTF\-8 locale.
496 for details and options.
498 .Bl -tag -width MANPAGER
500 Any non-empty value of the environment variable
502 will be used instead of the standard pagination program,
505 Specifies the pagination program to use when
508 If neither PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined,
509 .Pa /usr/bin/more Fl s
515 utility exits with one of the following values, controlled by the message
521 .Bl -tag -width Ds -compact
523 No warnings or errors occurred, or those that did were ignored because
524 they were lower than the requested
527 At least one warning occurred, but no error, and
531 At least one parsing error occurred,
532 but no unsupported feature was encountered, and
538 At least one unsupported feature was encountered, and
545 Invalid command line arguments were specified.
546 No input files have been read.
548 An operating system error occurred, for example exhaustion
549 of memory, file descriptors, or process table entries.
552 to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file.
558 .Fl W Ns Cm warning .
560 To page manuals to the terminal:
562 .Dl $ mandoc \-Wall,stop mandoc.1 2\*(Gt&1 | less
563 .Dl $ mandoc mandoc.1 mdoc.3 mdoc.7 | less
565 To produce HTML manuals with
569 .Dl $ mandoc \-Thtml -Ostyle=style.css mdoc.7 \*(Gt mdoc.7.html
571 To check over a large set of manuals:
573 .Dl $ mandoc \-Tlint `find /usr/src -name \e*\e.[1-9]`
575 To produce a series of PostScript manuals for A4 paper:
577 .Dl $ mandoc \-Tps \-Opaper=a4 mdoc.7 man.7 \*(Gt manuals.ps
583 format, for use on systems lacking an
587 .Dl $ mandoc \-Tman foo.mdoc \*(Gt foo.man
589 Messages displayed by
593 .D1 Nm Ns : Ar file : Ns Ar line : Ns Ar column : level : message : macro args
595 Line and column numbers start at 1.
596 Both are omitted for messages referring to an input file as a whole.
597 Macro names and arguments are omitted where meaningless.
598 Fatal messages about invalid command line arguments
599 or operating system errors, for example when memory is exhausted,
606 Message levels have the following meanings:
607 .Bl -tag -width "warning"
609 An input file uses unsupported low-level
612 The output may be incomplete and/or misformatted,
613 so using GNU troff instead of
615 to process the file may be preferable.
617 An input file contains invalid syntax that cannot be safely interpreted.
618 By discarding part of the input or inserting missing tokens,
619 the parser is able to continue, and the error does not prevent
620 generation of formatted output, but typically, preparing that
621 output involves information loss, broken document structure
622 or unintended formatting, no matter whether
624 or GNU troff is used.
625 In many cases, the output of
627 and GNU troff is identical, but in some,
629 is more resilient than GNU troff with respect to malformed input.
631 Non-existent or unreadable input files are also reported on the
634 In that case, the parser cannot even be started and no output
635 is produced from those input files.
637 An input file uses obsolete, discouraged or non-portable syntax.
638 All the same, the meaning of the input is unambiguous and a correct
639 rendering can be produced.
640 Documents causing warnings may render poorly when using other
641 formatting tools instead of
650 levels except those about non-existent or unreadable input files
651 are hidden unless their level, or a lower level, is requested using a
656 .Ss Warnings related to the document prologue
658 .It Sy "missing manual title, using UNTITLED"
662 macro has no arguments, or there is no
664 macro before the first non-prologue macro.
665 .It Sy "missing manual title, using \(dq\(dq"
669 macro, or it has no arguments.
670 .It Sy "lower case character in document title"
672 The title is still used as given in the
677 .It Sy "missing manual section, using \(dq\(dq"
683 macro lacks the mandatory section argument.
684 .It Sy "unknown manual section"
686 The section number in a
688 line is invalid, but still used.
689 .It Sy "missing date, using today's date"
691 The document was parsed as
697 macro has no arguments or only empty arguments;
698 or the document was parsed as
704 macro has less than three arguments or its third argument is empty.
705 .It Sy "cannot parse date, using it verbatim"
711 macro does not follow the conventional format.
712 .It Sy "missing Os macro, using \(dq\(dq"
714 The default or current system is not shown in this case.
715 .It Sy "duplicate prologue macro"
717 One of the prologue macros occurs more than once.
718 The last instance overrides all previous ones.
719 .It Sy "late prologue macro"
725 macro occurs after some non-prologue macro, but still takes effect.
726 .It Sy "skipping late title macro"
730 macro appears after the first non-prologue macro.
731 Traditional formatters cannot handle this because
732 they write the page header before parsing the document body.
733 Even though this technical restriction does not apply to
735 traditional semantics is preserved.
736 The late macro is discarded including its arguments.
737 .It Sy "prologue macros out of order"
739 The prologue macros are not given in the conventional order
743 All three macros are used even when given in another order.
745 .Ss Warnings regarding document structure
747 .It Sy ".so is fragile, better use ln(1)"
749 Including files only works when the parser program runs with the correct
750 current working directory.
751 .It Sy "no document body"
753 The document body contains neither text nor macros.
754 An empty document is shown, consisting only of a header and a footer line.
755 .It Sy "content before first section header"
757 Some macros or text precede the first
762 The offending macros and text are parsed and added to the top level
763 of the syntax tree, outside any section block.
764 .It Sy "first section is not NAME"
766 The argument of the first
774 .It Sy "bad NAME section contents"
776 The last node in the NAME section is not an
778 macro, or any preceding macro is not
780 or the NAME section is completely empty.
785 .It Sy "missing description line, using \(dq\(dq"
789 macro lacks the required argument.
790 The title line of the manual will end after the dash.
791 .It Sy "sections out of conventional order"
793 A standard section occurs after another section it usually precedes.
794 All section titles are used as given,
795 and the order of sections is not changed.
796 .It Sy "duplicate section title"
798 The same standard section title occurs more than once.
799 .It Sy "unexpected section"
801 A standard section header occurs in a section of the manual
802 where it normally isn't useful.
803 .It Sy "unusual Xr order"
805 In the SEE ALSO section, an
807 macro with a lower section number follows one with a higher number,
810 macros refering to the same section are out of alphabetical order.
811 .It Sy "unusual Xr punctuation"
813 In the SEE ALSO section, punctuation between two
815 macros differs from a single comma, or there is trailing punctuation
819 .It Sy "AUTHORS section without An macro"
821 An AUTHORS sections contains no
823 macros, or only empty ones.
824 Probably, there are author names lacking markup.
826 .Ss "Warnings related to macros and nesting"
828 .It Sy "obsolete macro"
832 manual for replacements.
833 .It Sy "macro neither callable nor escaped"
835 The name of a macro that is not callable appears on a macro line.
836 It is printed verbatim.
837 If the intention is to call it, move it to its own input line;
838 otherwise, escape it by prepending
840 .It Sy "skipping paragraph macro"
843 documents, this happens
846 at the beginning and end of sections and subsections
848 right before non-compact lists and displays
850 at the end of items in non-column, non-compact lists
852 and for multiple consecutive paragraph macros.
856 documents, it happens
868 macros having neither head nor body arguments
879 .It Sy "moving paragraph macro out of list"
883 list contains a trailing paragraph macro.
884 The paragraph macro is moved after the end of the list.
885 .It Sy "skipping no-space macro"
887 An input line begins with an
890 The macro is ignored.
891 .It Sy "blocks badly nested"
893 If two blocks intersect, one should completely contain the other.
894 Otherwise, rendered output is likely to look strange in any output
895 format, and rendering in SGML-based output formats is likely to be
896 outright wrong because such languages do not support badly nested
898 Typical examples of badly nested blocks are
899 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bo \&Ac \&Bc
901 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bq \&Ac .
909 .It Sy "nested displays are not portable"
916 display occurs nested inside another
921 but fails with most other implementations.
922 .It Sy "moving content out of list"
926 list block contains text or macros before the first
929 The offending children are moved before the beginning of the list.
930 .It Sy ".Vt block has child macro"
934 macro supports plain text arguments only.
935 Formatting may be ugly and semantic searching
936 for the affected content might not work.
937 .It Sy "fill mode already enabled, skipping"
941 request occurs even though the document is still in fill mode,
942 or already switched back to fill mode.
944 .It Sy "fill mode already disabled, skipping"
948 request occurs even though the document already switched to no-fill mode
949 and did not switch back to fill mode yet.
951 .It Sy "line scope broken"
953 While parsing the next-line scope of the previous macro,
954 another macro is found that prematurely terminates the previous one.
955 The previous, interrupted macro is deleted from the parse tree.
957 .Ss "Warnings related to missing arguments"
959 .It Sy "skipping empty request"
961 The macro name is missing from a macro definition request,
964 control statement or operation keyword lacks its required argument.
965 .It Sy "conditional request controls empty scope"
967 A conditional request is only useful if any of the following
968 follows it on the same logical input line:
973 keyword to open a multi-line scope.
975 A request or macro or some text, resulting in a single-line scope.
977 The immediate end of the logical line without any intervening whitespace,
978 resulting in next-line scope.
980 Here, a conditional request is followed by trailing whitespace only,
981 and there is no other content on its logical input line.
982 Note that it doesn't matter whether the logical input line is split
983 across multiple physical input lines using
985 line continuation characters.
986 This is one of the rare cases
987 where trailing whitespace is syntactically significant.
988 The conditional request controls a scope containing whitespace only,
989 so it is unlikely to have a significant effect,
990 except that it may control a following
993 .It Sy "skipping empty macro"
995 The indicated macro has no arguments and hence no effect.
1007 block contains nothing in its body and will produce no output.
1008 .It Sy "empty argument, using 0n"
1010 The required width is missing after
1017 .It Sy "missing display type, using -ragged"
1021 macro is invoked without the required display type.
1022 .It Sy "list type is not the first argument"
1026 macro, at least one other argument precedes the type argument.
1029 utility copes with any argument order, but some other
1031 implementations do not.
1032 .It Sy "missing -width in -tag list, using 8n"
1041 .It Sy "missing utility name, using \(dq\(dq"
1045 macro is called without an argument before
1047 has first been called with an argument.
1048 .It Sy "missing function name, using \(dq\(dq"
1052 macro is called without an argument.
1053 No function name is printed.
1054 .It Sy "empty head in list item"
1066 macro lacks the required argument.
1067 The item head is left empty.
1068 .It Sy "empty list item"
1080 An empty list item is shown.
1081 .It Sy "missing font type, using \efR"
1085 macro has no argument.
1086 It switches to the default font.
1087 .It Sy "unknown font type, using \efR"
1091 argument is invalid.
1092 The default font is used instead.
1093 .It Sy "nothing follows prefix"
1097 macro has no argument, or only one argument and no macro follows
1098 on the same input line.
1099 This defeats its purpose; in particular, spacing is not suppressed
1100 before the text or macros following on the next input line.
1101 .It Sy "empty reference block"
1105 macro is immediately followed by an
1107 macro on the next input line.
1108 Such an empty block does not produce any output.
1109 .It Sy "missing -std argument, adding it"
1115 macro lacks the required
1122 even when it is not specified, but other implementations may not.
1123 .It Sy "missing option string, using \(dq\(dq"
1127 macro is invoked without any argument.
1128 An empty pair of square brackets is shown.
1129 .It Sy "missing resource identifier, using \(dq\(dq"
1133 macro is invoked without any argument.
1134 An empty pair of angle brackets is shown.
1135 .It Sy "missing eqn box, using \(dq\(dq"
1137 A diacritic mark or a binary operator is found,
1138 but there is nothing to the left of it.
1139 An empty box is inserted.
1141 .Ss "Warnings related to bad macro arguments"
1143 .It Sy "unterminated quoted argument"
1145 Macro arguments can be enclosed in double quote characters
1146 such that space characters and macro names contained in the quoted
1147 argument need not be escaped.
1148 The closing quote of the last argument of a macro can be omitted.
1149 However, omitting it is not recommended because it makes the code
1151 .It Sy "duplicate argument"
1157 macro has more than one
1164 All but the last instances of these arguments are ignored.
1165 .It Sy "skipping duplicate argument"
1169 macro has more than one
1174 All but the first of these arguments are ignored.
1175 .It Sy "skipping duplicate display type"
1179 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1180 .It Sy "skipping duplicate list type"
1184 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1185 .It Sy "skipping -width argument"
1199 .It Sy "wrong number of cells"
1202 list, the number of tabs or
1204 macros is less than the number expected from the list header line
1205 or exceeds the expected number by more than one.
1206 Missing cells remain empty, and all cells exceeding the number of
1207 columns are joined into one single cell.
1208 .It Sy "unknown AT&T UNIX version"
1212 macro has an invalid argument.
1213 It is used verbatim, with
1216 .It Sy "comma in function argument"
1222 macro contains a comma; it should probably be split into two arguments.
1223 .It Sy "parenthesis in function name"
1225 The first argument of an
1229 macro contains an opening or closing parenthesis; that's probably wrong,
1230 parentheses are added automatically.
1231 .It Sy "invalid content in Rs block"
1235 block contains plain text or non-% macros.
1236 The bogus content is left in the syntax tree.
1237 Formatting may be poor.
1238 .It Sy "invalid Boolean argument"
1242 macro has an argument other than
1246 The invalid argument is moved out of the macro, which leaves the macro
1247 empty, causing it to toggle the spacing mode.
1248 .It Sy "unknown font, skipping request"
1256 layout modifier has an unknown
1259 .It Sy "odd number of characters in request"
1263 request contains an odd number of characters.
1264 The last character is mapped to the blank character.
1266 .Ss "Warnings related to plain text"
1268 .It Sy "blank line in fill mode, using .sp"
1270 The meaning of blank input lines is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1271 In fill mode, line breaks of text input lines are not supposed to be
1273 However, for compatibility with groff, blank lines in fill mode
1277 .It Sy "tab in filled text"
1279 The meaning of tab characters is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1280 In fill mode, whitespace is not supposed to be significant
1281 on text input lines.
1282 As an implementation dependent choice, tab characters on text lines
1283 are passed through to the formatters in any case.
1284 Given that the text before the tab character will be filled,
1285 it is hard to predict which tab stop position the tab will advance to.
1286 .It Sy "whitespace at end of input line"
1287 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1288 Whitespace at the end of input lines is almost never semantically
1289 significant \(em but in the odd case where it might be, it is
1290 extremely confusing when reviewing and maintaining documents.
1291 .It Sy "bad comment style"
1293 Comment lines start with a dot, a backslash, and a double-quote character.
1296 utility treats the line as a comment line even without the backslash,
1297 but leaving out the backslash might not be portable.
1298 .It Sy "invalid escape sequence"
1300 An escape sequence has an invalid opening argument delimiter, lacks the
1301 closing argument delimiter, or the argument has too few characters.
1302 If the argument is incomplete,
1306 expand to an empty string,
1312 to the length of the incomplete argument.
1313 All other invalid escape sequences are ignored.
1314 .It Sy "undefined string, using \(dq\(dq"
1316 If a string is used without being defined before,
1317 its value is implicitly set to the empty string.
1318 However, defining strings explicitly before use
1319 keeps the code more readable.
1321 .Ss "Warnings related to tables"
1323 .It Sy "tbl line starts with span"
1325 The first cell in a table layout line is a horizontal span
1327 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1328 .It Sy "tbl column starts with span"
1330 The first line of a table layout specification
1331 requests a vertical span
1333 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1334 .It Sy "skipping vertical bar in tbl layout"
1336 A table layout specification contains more than two consecutive vertical bars.
1337 A double bar is printed, all additional bars are discarded.
1339 .Ss "Errors related to tables"
1341 .It Sy "non-alphabetic character in tbl options"
1343 The table options line contains a character other than a letter,
1344 blank, or comma where the beginning of an option name is expected.
1345 The character is ignored.
1346 .It Sy "skipping unknown tbl option"
1348 The table options line contains a string of letters that does not
1349 match any known option name.
1350 The word is ignored.
1351 .It Sy "missing tbl option argument"
1353 A table option that requires an argument is not followed by an
1354 opening parenthesis, or the opening parenthesis is immediately
1355 followed by a closing parenthesis.
1356 The option is ignored.
1357 .It Sy "wrong tbl option argument size"
1359 A table option argument contains an invalid number of characters.
1360 Both the option and the argument are ignored.
1361 .It Sy "empty tbl layout"
1363 A table layout specification is completely empty,
1364 specifying zero lines and zero columns.
1365 As a fallback, a single left-justified column is used.
1366 .It Sy "invalid character in tbl layout"
1368 A table layout specification contains a character that can neither
1369 be interpreted as a layout key character nor as a layout modifier,
1370 or a modifier precedes the first key.
1371 The invalid character is discarded.
1372 .It Sy "unmatched parenthesis in tbl layout"
1374 A table layout specification contains an opening parenthesis,
1375 but no matching closing parenthesis.
1376 The rest of the input line, starting from the parenthesis, has no effect.
1377 .It Sy "tbl without any data cells"
1379 A table does not contain any data cells.
1380 It will probably produce no output.
1381 .It Sy "ignoring data in spanned tbl cell"
1383 A table cell is marked as a horizontal span
1387 in the table layout, but it contains data.
1388 The data is ignored.
1389 .It Sy "ignoring extra tbl data cells"
1391 A data line contains more cells than the corresponding layout line.
1392 The data in the extra cells is ignored.
1393 .It Sy "data block open at end of tbl"
1395 A data block is opened with
1397 but never closed with a matching
1399 The remaining data lines of the table are all put into one cell,
1400 and any remaining cells stay empty.
1402 .Ss "Errors related to roff, mdoc, and man code"
1404 .It Sy "input stack limit exceeded, infinite loop?"
1406 Explicit recursion limits are implemented for the following features,
1407 in order to prevent infinite loops:
1410 expansion of nested escape sequences
1411 including expansion of strings and number registers,
1413 expansion of nested user-defined macros,
1419 When a limit is hit, the output is incorrect, typically losing
1420 some content, but the parser can continue.
1421 .It Sy "skipping bad character"
1422 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1423 The input file contains a byte that is not a printable
1426 The message mentions the character number.
1427 The offending byte is replaced with a question mark
1429 Consider editing the input file to replace the byte with an ASCII
1430 transliteration of the intended character.
1431 .It Sy "skipping unknown macro"
1432 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1433 The first identifier on a request or macro line is neither recognized as a
1435 request, nor as a user-defined macro, nor, respectively, as an
1440 It may be mistyped or unsupported.
1441 The request or macro is discarded including its arguments.
1442 .It Sy "skipping insecure request"
1444 An input file attempted to run a shell command
1445 or to read or write an external file.
1446 Such attempts are denied for security reasons.
1447 .It Sy "skipping item outside list"
1451 macro occurs outside any
1456 delimiter occurs outside any pile.
1457 It is discarded including its arguments.
1458 .It Sy "skipping column outside column list"
1462 macro occurs outside any
1465 It is discarded including its arguments.
1466 .It Sy "skipping end of block that is not open"
1467 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1468 Various syntax elements can only be used to explicitly close blocks
1469 that have previously been opened.
1472 block closing macro, a
1479 right delimiter or closing brace, or the end of an equation, table, or
1481 conditional request is encountered but no matching block is open.
1482 The offending request or macro is discarded.
1483 .It Sy "fewer RS blocks open, skipping"
1487 macro is invoked with an argument, but less than the specified number of
1493 .It Sy "inserting missing end of block"
1497 macros as well as tables require explicit closing by dedicated macros.
1498 A block that doesn't support bad nesting
1499 ends before all of its children are properly closed.
1500 The open child nodes are closed implicitly.
1501 .It Sy "appending missing end of block"
1502 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1503 At the end of the document, an explicit
1511 block, an equation, table, or
1513 conditional or ignore block is still open.
1514 The open block is closed implicitly.
1515 .It Sy "escaped character not allowed in a name"
1517 Macro, string and register identifiers consist of printable,
1518 non-whitespace ASCII characters.
1519 Escape sequences and characters and strings expressed in terms of them
1520 cannot form part of a name.
1521 The first argument of an
1529 request, or any argument of an
1531 request, or the name of a request or user defined macro being called,
1532 is terminated by an escape sequence.
1538 the request has no effect at all.
1545 what was parsed up to this point is used as the arguments to the request,
1546 and the rest of the input line is discarded including the escape sequence.
1547 When parsing for a request or a user-defined macro name to be called,
1548 only the escape sequence is discarded.
1549 The characters preceding it are used as the request or macro name,
1550 the characters following it are used as the arguments to the request or macro.
1551 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: Bd -file"
1553 For security reasons, the
1555 macro does not support the
1558 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1559 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1560 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1561 The argument is ignored including the file name following it.
1562 .It Sy "missing list type, using -item"
1566 macro fails to specify the list type.
1567 .It Sy "missing manual name, using \(dq\(dq"
1571 lacks the required argument.
1572 .It Sy "uname(3) system call failed, using UNKNOWN"
1576 macro is called without arguments, and the
1581 can be compiled with
1583 .Fl D Cm OSNAME=\(dq\e\(dq Ar string Cm \e\(dq\(dq .
1585 .It Sy "unknown standard specifier"
1589 macro has an unknown argument and is discarded.
1590 .It Sy "skipping request without numeric argument"
1599 statement has a non-numeric or negative argument or no argument at all.
1600 The invalid request or statement is ignored.
1601 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: .so with absolute path or \(dq..\(dq"
1603 For security reasons,
1607 file inclusion requests only with relative paths
1608 and only without ascending to any parent directory.
1609 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1610 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1611 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1613 only shows the path as it appears behind
1615 .It Sy ".so request failed"
1619 request requires reading an external file, but the file could not be
1622 only shows the path as it appears behind
1624 .It Sy "skipping all arguments"
1625 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , roff
1641 macro in a list that don't support item heads, a
1660 block closing request is invoked with at least one argument.
1661 All arguments are ignored.
1662 .It Sy "skipping excess arguments"
1663 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1664 A macro or request is invoked with too many arguments:
1665 .Bl -dash -offset 2n -width 2n -compact
1674 with more than one argument
1677 with another argument after
1683 with more than one argument or with a non-integer argument
1688 family with more than two arguments
1691 with more than five arguments
1697 with invalid arguments
1699 The excess arguments are ignored.
1701 .Ss Unsupported features
1703 .It Sy "input too large"
1707 cannot handle input files larger than its arbitrary size limit
1708 of 2^31 bytes (2 Gigabytes).
1709 Since useful manuals are always small, this is not a problem in practice.
1710 Parsing is aborted as soon as the condition is detected.
1711 .It Sy "unsupported control character"
1713 An ASCII control character supported by other
1715 implementations but not by
1717 was found in an input file.
1718 It is replaced by a question mark.
1719 .It Sy "unsupported roff request"
1721 An input file contains a
1723 request supported by GNU troff or Heirloom troff but not by
1725 and it is likely that this will cause information loss
1726 or considerable misformatting.
1727 .It Sy "eqn delim option in tbl"
1729 The options line of a table defines equation delimiters.
1730 Any equation source code contained in the table will be printed unformatted.
1731 .It Sy "unsupported table layout modifier"
1733 A table layout specification contains an
1736 The modifier is discarded.
1737 .It Sy "ignoring macro in table"
1738 .Pq tbl , mdoc , man
1739 A table contains an invocation of an
1743 macro or of an undefined macro.
1744 The macro is ignored, and its arguments are handled
1745 as if they were a text line.
1759 utility was written by
1760 .An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv
1761 and is maintained by
1762 .An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org .
1766 the maximum size of an element attribute is determined by
1768 which is usually 1024 bytes.
1769 Be aware of this when setting long link
1771 .Fl O Ns Cm style Ns = Ns Ar really/long/link .
git.ckatri.com / mandoc.git / blob