1 ************************************************************************
2 * Official mandoc TODO.
3 * $Id: TODO,v 1.109 2011/06/11 15:41:35 schwarze Exp $
4 ************************************************************************
6 ************************************************************************
8 ************************************************************************
10 - .TP before .SH is still FATAL in man(7)
11 reported by brad@ Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:54:54 -0500
13 ************************************************************************
15 ************************************************************************
17 - tbl(7): Horizontal and vertical lines are formatted badly:
18 With the box option, there is too much white space at the end of cells.
19 Horizontal lines from "=" lines are a bit too long.
20 yuri dot pankov at gmail dot com Thu, 14 Apr 2011 05:45:26 +0400
22 ************************************************************************
24 ************************************************************************
26 --- missing roff features ----------------------------------------------
28 - .ad (adjust margins)
29 .ad l -- adjust left margin only (flush left)
30 .ad r -- adjust right margin only (flush right)
31 .ad c -- center text on line
32 .ad b -- adjust both margins (alias: .ad n)
33 .na -- temporarily disable adjustment without changing the mode
34 .ad -- re-enable adjustment without changing the mode
35 Adjustment mode is ignored while in no-fill mode (.nf).
37 - .it (line traps) occur in mysql(1), yasm_arch(7)
38 generated by DocBook XSL Stylesheets v1.71.1 <http://docbook.sf.net/>
39 reported by brad@ Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:48:18 -0500
41 - .ns (no-space mode) occurs in xine-config(1)
42 reported by brad@ Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:45:23 -0500
44 - xloadimage(1) wants .ti (temporary indent), rep by naddy@
46 - .ta (tab settings) occurs in ircbug(1) and probably gnats(1)
47 reported by brad@ Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:50:51 -0500
49 - pod2man expects `tr' to be implemented for \*(-- to work
51 - \c (interrupted text) occurs in chat(8)
53 --- missing mdoc features ----------------------------------------------
55 - fix bad block nesting involving multiple identical explicit blocks
56 see the OpenBSD mdoc_macro.c 1.47 commit message
58 - .Bl -column .Xo support is missing
60 restore .Xr and .Dv to
61 lib/libc/compat-43/sigvec.3
63 lib/libc/sys/sigaction.2
65 - edge case: decide how to deal with blk_full bad nesting, e.g.
66 .Sh .Nm .Bk .Nm .Ek .Sh found by jmc@ in ssh-keygen(1)
67 from jmc@ Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:10:32 +0100
69 - \\ is now implemented correctly
70 * when defining strings and macros using .ds and .de
71 * when parsing roff(7) and man(7) macro arguments
72 It does not yet work in mdoc(7) macro arguments
73 because libmdoc does not yet use mandoc_getarg().
74 Also check what happens in plain text, it must be identical to \e.
76 - .Bd -filled should not be the same as .Bd -ragged, but align both
77 the left and right margin. In groff, it is implemented in terms
78 of .ad b, which we don't have either. Found in cksum(1).
80 - implement blank `Bl -column', such as
85 - explicitly disallow nested `Bl -column', which would clobber internal
86 flags defined for struct mdoc_macro
88 - In .Bl -column .It, the end of the line probably has to be regarded
89 as an implicit .Ta, if there could be one, see the following mildly
90 ugly code from login.conf(5):
91 .Bl -column minpasswordlen program xetcxmotd
92 .It path Ta path Ta value of Dv _PATH_DEFPATH
95 reported by Michal Mazurek <akfaew at jasminek dot net>
96 via jmc@ Thu, 7 Apr 2011 16:00:53 +0059
98 - inside `.Bl -column' phrases, punctuation is handled like normal
99 text, e.g. `.Bl -column .It Fl x . Ta ...' should give "-x -."
101 - inside `.Bl -column' phrases, TERMP_IGNDELIM handling by `Pf'
102 is not safe, e.g. `.Bl -column .It Pf a b .' gives "ab."
103 but should give "ab ."
105 - set a meaningful default if no `Bl' list type is assigned
107 - have a blank `It' head for `Bl -tag' not puke
109 - prohibit `Nm' from having non-text HEAD children
110 (e.g., NetBSD mDNSShared/dns-sd.1)
111 (mdoc_html.c and mdoc_term.c `Nm' handlers can be slightly simplified)
113 - When there is free text in the SYNOPSIS and that free text contains
114 the .Nm macro, groff somehow understands to treat the .Nm as an in-line
115 macro, while mandoc treats it as a block macro and breaks the line.
116 No idea how the logic for distinguishing in-line and block instances
117 should be, needs investigation.
118 uqs@ Thu, 2 Jun 2011 11:03:51 +0200
119 uqs@ Thu, 2 Jun 2011 11:33:35 +0200
121 --- missing man features -----------------------------------------------
123 - .RS/.RE can be nested, see e.g. the x11/fluxbox manuals
124 noticed by dcoppa@ Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 04:58:14PM +0200:
125 also affects p5-Net-SFTP-Foreign-1.65
126 as reported by gsoares@ Wed, 18 May 2011 09:59:06 -0300
128 - groff an-ext.tmac macros (.UR, .UE) occur in xine(5)
129 reported by brad@ Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:45:23 -0500
131 --- missing tbl features -----------------------------------------------
133 - implement basic non-parametric .de to support e.g. sox(1)
134 reported by naddy@ Sat, 16 Oct 2010 23:51:57 +0200
135 *** sox(1) still doesn't work, tbl(1) errors need investigation
137 - allow standalone `.' to be interpreted as an end-of-layout
138 delimiter instead of being thrown away as a no-op roff line
139 reported by Yuri Pankov, Wed 18 May 2011 11:34:59 CEST
141 --- missing misc features ----------------------------------------------
143 - clean up escape sequence handling, creating three classes:
144 (1) fully implemented, or parsed and ignored without loss of content
145 (2) unimplemented, potentially causing loss of content
146 or serious mangling of formatting (e.g. \n) -> ERROR
147 see textproc/mgdiff(1) for nice examples
148 (3) undefined, just output the character -> perhaps WARNING
150 - The \t escape sequence is the same as a literal tab, see for example
151 the ASCII table in hexdump(1) where
152 .Bl -column \&000_nu \&001_so \&002_st \&003_et \&004_eo
153 .It \&000\ nul\t001\ soh\t002\ stx\t003\ etx\t004\ eot\t005\ enq
155 000 nul 001 soh 002 stx 003 etx 004 eot 005 enq
156 and the example in oldrdist(1)
158 - look at pages generated from reStructeredText, e.g. devel/mercurial hg(1)
159 These are a weird mixture of man(7) and custom autogenerated low-level
160 roff stuff. Figure out to what extent we can cope.
161 For details, see http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html
162 noted by stsp@ Sat, 24 Apr 2010 09:17:55 +0200
163 reminded by nicm@ Mon, 3 May 2010 09:52:41 +0100
165 - check compatibility with Plan9:
166 http://swtch.com/usr/local/plan9/tmac/tmac.an
167 http://swtch.com/plan9port/man/man7/man.html
168 "Anthony J. Bentley" <anthonyjbentley@gmail.com> 28 Dec 2010 21:58:40 -0700
170 ************************************************************************
171 * formatting issues: ugly output
172 ************************************************************************
174 - a column list with blank `Ta' cells triggers a spurrious
175 start-with-whitespace printing of a newline
177 - double quotes inside double quotes are escaped by doubling them
178 implement this in mdoc(7), too
179 so far, we only have it in roff(7) and man(7)
180 reminded by millert@ Thu, 09 Dec 2010 17:29:52 -0500
182 - perl(1) SYNOPSIS looks bad; reported by deraadt@
183 1) man(7) seems to need SYNOPSIS .Nm blocks, too
186 .It Em Authentication<tab>Key Length
187 ought to render "Key Length" with emphasis, too,
188 see OpenBSD iked.conf(5).
190 - empty phrases in .Bl column produce too few blanks
191 try e.g. .Bl -column It Ta Ta
192 reported by millert Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:13:46 -0400
194 - .%T can have trailing punctuation. Currently, it puts the trailing
195 punctuation into a trailing MDOC_TEXT element inside its own scope.
196 That element should rather be outside its scope, such that the
197 punctuation does not get underlines. This is not trivial to
198 implement because .%T then needs some features of in_line_eoln() -
199 slurp all arguments into one single text element - and one feature
200 of in_line() - put trailing punctuation out of scope.
201 Found in mount_nfs(8) and exports(5), search for "Appendix".
203 - in enclosures, mandoc sometimes fancies a bogus end of sentence
204 reminded by jmc@ Thu, 23 Sep 2010 18:13:39 +0059
206 ************************************************************************
207 * formatting issues: gratuitous differences
208 ************************************************************************
210 - .Rv (and probably .Ex) print different text if an `Nm' has been named
211 or not (run a manual without `Nm blah' to see this). I'm not sure
212 that this exists in the wild, but it's still an error.
214 - In .Bl -bullet, the groff bullet is "+\b+\bo\bo", the mandoc bullet
216 see for example OpenBSD ksh(1)
218 - The characters "|" and "\*(Ba" should never be bold,
219 not even in the middle of a word, e.g. ".Cm b\*(Bac" in
220 "mknod [-m mode] name b|c major minor"
223 - A bogus .Pp between two .It must not produce a double blank line,
224 see between -R and -r in OpenBSD rm(1), before "update" in mount(8),
225 or in DIAGNOSTICS in init(8), or before "is always true" in ksh(1).
226 The same happens with .Pp just before .El, see bgpd.conf(5).
227 Also have `It' complain if `Pp' is invoked at certain times (not
230 - .Pp between two .It in .Bl -column should produce one,
231 not two blank lines, see e.g. login.conf(5).
232 reported by jmc@ Sun, 17 Apr 2011 14:04:58 +0059
234 - If the *first* line after .It is .Pp, break the line right after
235 the tag, do not pad with space characters before breaking.
236 See the description of the a, c, and i commands in sed(1).
238 - If the first line after .It is .D1, do not assert a blank line
239 in between, see for example tmux(1).
240 reported by nicm@ 13 Jan 2011 00:18:57 +0000
243 should be "NetBSD 1.0A", not "NetBSD 1.0a",
244 see OpenBSD ccdconfig(8).
246 - In .Bl -tag, if a tag exceeds the right margin and must be continued
247 on the next line, it must be indented by -width, not width+1;
248 see "rule block|pass" in OpenBSD ifconfig(8).
250 - When the -width string contains macros, the macros must be rendered
251 before measuring the width, for example
252 .Bl -tag -width ".Dv message"
253 in magic(5), located in src/usr.bin/file, is the same
254 as -width 7n, not -width 11n.
256 - The \& zero-width character counts as output.
257 That is, when it is alone on a line between two .Pp,
258 we want three blank lines, not two as in mandoc.
260 - When .Fn arguments exceed one output line, all but the first
261 should be indented, see e.g. rpc(3);
262 reported by jmc@ on discuss@ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 13:48:33 +0100
264 - .Ns should work when called at the end of an input line, see
265 the following code in vi(1):
268 .Cm a Ns Op Cm ppend Ns
271 The input text is appended after the specified line.
273 - Header lines of excessive length:
274 Port OpenBSD man_term.c rev. 1.25 to mdoc_term.c
275 and document it in mdoc(7) and man(7) COMPATIBILITY
276 found while talking to Chris Bennett
278 - In man(7), the sequence
280 one line of regular text
282 should not produce two blank lines before the .SH,
283 see for example named-checkconf(8).
285 - In man(7), the sequence
289 should have a blank line between the text and the beginning of the
290 indented paragraph, see for example sudo(1).
292 - In man(7), the sequence
297 should not produce any blank lines between the header and the text,
298 see for example rsync(1).
299 Reported by naddy@ Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:45:42 +0200
301 - In man(7), the sequence
306 should produce one blank line between the regular and indented texts,
307 see for example rsync(1), and
312 should produce two,not one blank lines.
313 Reported by naddy@ Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:45:42 +0200
315 - In man(7), the sequence
320 should produce one, not four blank lines between the regular text
321 and the tag, see for example rsync(1).
326 should produce one, not two blank lines in between, and
332 should produce one, not three blank lines.
333 Reported by naddy@ Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:45:42 +0200
335 - At least sometimes, .sp is ignored right after .SH; see named.conf(5).
337 - trailing whitespace must be ignored even when followed by a font escape,
341 operate in batch mode
344 ************************************************************************
345 * error reporting issues
346 ************************************************************************
348 ************************************************************************
350 ************************************************************************
352 Several areas can be cleaned up to make mandoc even faster. These are
354 - improve hashing mechanism for macros (quite important: performance)
356 - improve hashing mechanism for characters (not as important)
358 - the PDF file is HUGE: this can be reduced by using relative offsets
360 ************************************************************************
362 ************************************************************************
364 - Find better ways to prevent endless loops
365 in roff(7) macro and string expansion.
367 - Finish cleanup of date handling.
368 Decide which formats should be recognized where.
369 Update both mdoc(7) and man(7) documentation.
370 Triggered by Tim van der Molen Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:30:45 +0100