1 .\" $Id: mandoc.1,v 1.216 2017/07/07 16:20:30 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: July 7 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.
157 level automatically derives the operating system from the contents of the
161 command line option, or from the
170 that bypass autodetection and request validation of base system
171 conventions for a particular operating system.
189 to exit after parsing a file that causes warnings or errors of at least
191 No formatted output will be produced from that file.
196 are requested, they can be joined with a comma, for example
197 .Fl W Cm error , Ns Cm stop .
199 Read input from zero or more files.
200 If unspecified, reads from stdin.
201 If multiple files are specified,
203 will halt with the first failed parse.
208 are also supported and are documented in man(1).
215 also supports the options
222 are mutually exclusive and override each other.
226 utility accepts the following
228 arguments, which correspond to output modes:
229 .Bl -tag -width "-T markdown"
231 Produce 7-bit ASCII output.
235 Produce HTML5, CSS1, and MathML output.
239 Parse only: produce no output.
243 Encode output using the current locale.
258 .Sx Markdown Output .
264 Produce PostScript output.
266 .Sx PostScript Output .
268 Produce an indented parse tree.
270 .Sx Syntax tree output .
272 Encode output in the UTF\-8 multi-byte format.
277 If multiple input files are specified, these will be processed by the
278 corresponding filter in-order.
282 is rendered in standard 7-bit ASCII documented in
285 Font styles are applied by using back-spaced encoding such that an
289 .Sq _ Ns \e[bs] Ns c ,
292 is the back-space character number 8.
293 Emboldened characters are rendered as
294 .Sq c Ns \e[bs] Ns c .
296 The special characters documented in
298 are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent.
300 Output width is limited to 78 visible columns unless literal input lines
305 arguments are accepted:
307 .It Cm indent Ns = Ns Ar indent
308 The left margin for normal text is set to
310 blank characters instead of the default of five for
314 Increasing this is not recommended; it may result in degraded formatting,
315 for example overfull lines or ugly line breaks.
316 .It Cm width Ns = Ns Ar width
317 The output width is set to
323 conforms to HTML5 using optional self-closing tags.
324 Default styles use only CSS1.
325 Equations rendered from
331 file documents style-sheet classes available for customising output.
332 If a style-sheet is not specified with
335 defaults to simple output (via an embedded style-sheet)
336 readable in any graphical or text-based web
339 Special characters are rendered in decimal-encoded UTF\-8.
343 arguments are accepted:
346 Omit the <!DOCTYPE> declaration and the <html>, <head>, and <body>
347 elements and only emit the subtree below the <body> element.
350 argument will be ignored.
351 This is useful when embedding manual content within existing documents.
352 .It Cm includes Ns = Ns Ar fmt
357 is used as a template for linked header files (usually via the
362 are replaced with the include filename.
363 The default is not to present a
365 .It Cm man Ns = Ns Ar fmt
369 .Ar ../html%S/%N.%S.html ,
370 is used as a template for linked manuals (usually via the
377 are replaced with the linked manual's name and section, respectively.
378 If no section is included, section 1 is assumed.
379 The default is not to
381 .It Cm style Ns = Ns Ar style.css
384 is used for an external style-sheet.
385 This must be a valid absolute or
389 Locale-depending output encoding is triggered with
393 This option is not available on all systems: systems without locale
394 support, or those whose internal representation is not natively UCS-4,
399 for font style specification and available command-line arguments.
401 Translate input format into
404 This is useful for distributing manual sources to legacy systems
411 is passed as input, it is translated into
413 If the input format is
415 the input is copied to the output, expanding any
419 The parser is also run, and as usual, the
423 are displayed before copying the input to the output.
430 .Lk http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax.text\
431 "John Gruber's 2004 specification" .
432 The output also almost conforms to the
433 .Lk http://commonmark.org/ CommonMark
436 The character set used for the markdown output is ASCII.
437 Non-ASCII characters are encoded as HTML entities.
438 Since that is not possible in literal font contexts, because these
439 are rendered as code spans and code blocks in the markdown output,
440 non-ASCII characters are transliterated to ASCII approximations in
443 Markdown is a very weak markup language, so all semantic markup is
444 lost, and even part of the presentational markup may be lost.
445 Do not use this as an intermediate step in converting to HTML;
455 input languages are not supported by
459 PDF-1.1 output may be generated by
462 .Sx PostScript Output
465 arguments and defaults.
466 .Ss PostScript Output
469 Level-2 pages may be generated by
471 Output pages default to letter sized and are rendered in the Times font
473 Margins are calculated as 1/9 the page length and width.
476 Special characters are rendered as in
481 arguments are accepted:
483 .It Cm paper Ns = Ns Ar name
493 You may also manually specify dimensions as
495 width by height in millimetres.
496 If an unknown value is encountered,
503 to force a UTF\-8 locale.
506 for details and options.
507 .Ss Syntax tree output
510 to show a human readable representation of the syntax tree.
511 It is useful for debugging the source code of manual pages.
512 The exact format is subject to change, so don't write parsers for it.
514 The first paragraph shows meta data found in the
519 line, or the fallbacks used.
521 In the tree dump, each output line shows one syntax tree node.
522 Child nodes are indented with respect to their parent node.
527 For macro nodes, the macro name; for text and
530 There is a special format for
534 Node type (text, elem, block, head, body, body-end, tail, tbl, eqn).
539 An opening parenthesis if the node is an opening delimiter.
541 An asterisk if the node starts a new input line.
543 The input line number (starting at one).
547 The input column number (starting at one).
549 A closing parenthesis if the node is a closing delimiter.
551 A full stop if the node ends a sentence.
553 BROKEN if the node is a block broken by another block.
555 NOSRC if the node is not in the input file,
556 but automatically generated from macros.
558 NOPRT if the node is not supposed to generate output
559 for any output format.
565 argument is accepted:
568 Skip validation and show the unvalidated syntax tree.
569 This can help to find out whether a given behaviour is caused by
570 the parser or by the validator.
571 Meta data is not available in this case.
574 .Bl -tag -width MANPAGER
576 Any non-empty value of the environment variable
578 is used instead of the standard pagination program,
589 Specifies the pagination program to use when
592 If neither PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined,
605 utility exits with one of the following values, controlled by the message
611 .Bl -tag -width Ds -compact
613 No base system convention violations, style suggestions, warnings,
614 or errors occurred, or those that did were ignored because they
615 were lower than the requested
618 At least one base system convention violation or style suggestion
619 occurred, but no warning or error, and
625 At least one warning occurred, but no error, and
631 At least one parsing error occurred,
632 but no unsupported feature was encountered, and
638 At least one unsupported feature was encountered, and
644 Invalid command line arguments were specified.
645 No input files have been read.
647 An operating system error occurred, for example exhaustion
648 of memory, file descriptors, or process table entries.
651 to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file.
659 To page manuals to the terminal:
661 .Dl $ mandoc -l mandoc.1 man.1 apropos.1 makewhatis.8
663 To produce HTML manuals with
667 .Dl $ mandoc \-T html -O style=mandoc.css mdoc.7 \*(Gt mdoc.7.html
669 To check over a large set of manuals:
671 .Dl $ mandoc \-T lint \(gafind /usr/src -name \e*\e.[1-9]\(ga
673 To produce a series of PostScript manuals for A4 paper:
675 .Dl $ mandoc \-T ps \-O paper=a4 mdoc.7 man.7 \*(Gt manuals.ps
681 format, for use on systems lacking an
685 .Dl $ mandoc \-T man foo.mdoc \*(Gt foo.man
687 Messages displayed by
690 .Bd -ragged -offset indent
692 .Ar file : Ns Ar line : Ns Ar column : level : message : macro args
696 Line and column numbers start at 1.
697 Both are omitted for messages referring to an input file as a whole.
698 Macro names and arguments are omitted where meaningless.
701 operating system specifier is omitted for messages that are relevant
702 for all operating systems.
703 Fatal messages about invalid command line arguments
704 or operating system errors, for example when memory is exhausted,
711 Message levels have the following meanings:
712 .Bl -tag -width "warning"
714 An input file uses unsupported low-level
717 The output may be incomplete and/or misformatted,
718 so using GNU troff instead of
720 to process the file may be preferable.
722 Indicates a risk of information loss or severe misformatting,
723 in most cases caused by serious syntax errors.
725 Indicates a risk that the information shown or its formatting
726 may mismatch the author's intent in minor ways.
727 Additionally, syntax errors are classified at least as warnings,
728 even if they do not usually cause misformatting.
730 An input file uses dubious or discouraged style.
731 This is not a complaint about the syntax, and probably neither
732 formatting nor portability are in danger.
733 While great care is taken to avoid false positives on the higher
736 level tries to reduce the probability that issues go unnoticed,
737 so it may occasionally issue bogus suggestions.
738 Please use your good judgement to decide whether any particular
740 suggestion really justifies a change to the input file.
742 A convertion used in the base system of a specific operating system
744 These are not markup mistakes, and neither the quality of formatting
745 nor portability are in danger.
748 level are printed with the more intuitive
761 levels except those about non-existent or unreadable input files
762 are hidden unless their level, or a lower level, is requested using a
768 As indicated below, all
772 checks are only performed if a specific operating system name occurs
773 in the arguments of the
775 command line option, of the
779 command line option, or, if neither are present, in the return value
783 .Ss Conventions for base system manuals
785 .It Sy "Mdocdate found"
791 keyword substitution, which is not supported by the
794 Consider using the conventional
797 .It Sy "Mdocdate missing"
801 macro does not use CVS
803 keyword substitution, but using it is conventionally expected in the
806 .It Sy "unknown architecture"
808 The third argument of the
810 macro does not match any of the architectures this operating system
812 .It Sy "operating system explicitly specified"
816 macro has an argument.
817 In the base system, it is conventionally left blank.
818 .It Sy "RCS id missing"
820 The manual page lacks the comment line with the RCS identifier
825 keyword substitution as conventionally used in these operating systems.
826 .It Sy "referenced manual not found"
830 macro references a manual page that is not found in the base system.
831 The path to look for base system manuals is configurable at compile
833 .Pa /usr/share/man : /usr/X11R6/man .
835 .Ss Style suggestions
837 .It Sy "legacy man(7) date format"
841 macro uses the legacy
845 Consider using the conventional
850 .It Sy "lower case character in document title"
852 The title is still used as given in the
857 .It Sy "duplicate RCS id"
858 A single manual page contains two copies of the RCS identifier for
859 the same operating system.
860 Consider deleting the later instance and moving the first one up
861 to the top of the page.
862 .It Sy "typo in section name"
864 Fuzzy string matching revealed that the argument of an
866 macro is similar, but not identical to a standard section name.
867 .It Sy "unterminated quoted argument"
869 Macro arguments can be enclosed in double quote characters
870 such that space characters and macro names contained in the quoted
871 argument need not be escaped.
872 The closing quote of the last argument of a macro can be omitted.
873 However, omitting it is not recommended because it makes the code
875 .It Sy "useless macro"
883 Simply delete it: it serves no useful purpose.
884 .It Sy "consider using OS macro"
886 A string was found in plain text or in a
888 macro that could be represented using
894 .It Sy "errnos out of order"
900 list are not in alphabetical order.
901 .It Sy "duplicate errno"
905 list contains two consecutive
907 entries describing the same
910 .It Sy "trailing delimiter"
912 The last argument of an
913 .Ic \&Ex , \&Fo , \&Nd , \&Nm , \&Os , \&Sh , \&Ss , \&St ,
916 macro ends with a trailing delimiter.
917 This is usually bad style and often indicates typos.
918 Most likely, the delimiter can be removed.
919 .It Sy "no blank before trailing delimiter"
921 The last argument of a macro that supports trailing delimiter
922 arguments is longer than one byte and ends with a trailing delimiter.
923 Consider inserting a blank such that the delimiter becomes a separate
924 argument, thus moving it out of the scope of the macro.
925 .It Sy "fill mode already enabled, skipping"
929 request occurs even though the document is still in fill mode,
930 or already switched back to fill mode.
932 .It Sy "fill mode already disabled, skipping"
936 request occurs even though the document already switched to no-fill mode
937 and did not switch back to fill mode yet.
939 .It Sy "function name without markup"
941 A word followed by an empty pair of parentheses occurs on a text line.
947 .It Sy "whitespace at end of input line"
948 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
949 Whitespace at the end of input lines is almost never semantically
950 significant \(em but in the odd case where it might be, it is
951 extremely confusing when reviewing and maintaining documents.
952 .It Sy "bad comment style"
954 Comment lines start with a dot, a backslash, and a double-quote character.
957 utility treats the line as a comment line even without the backslash,
958 but leaving out the backslash might not be portable.
960 .Ss Warnings related to the document prologue
962 .It Sy "missing manual title, using UNTITLED"
966 macro has no arguments, or there is no
968 macro before the first non-prologue macro.
969 .It Sy "missing manual title, using \(dq\(dq"
973 macro, or it has no arguments.
974 .It Sy "missing manual section, using \(dq\(dq"
980 macro lacks the mandatory section argument.
981 .It Sy "unknown manual section"
983 The section number in a
985 line is invalid, but still used.
986 .It Sy "missing date, using today's date"
988 The document was parsed as
994 macro has no arguments or only empty arguments;
995 or the document was parsed as
1001 macro has less than three arguments or its third argument is empty.
1002 .It Sy "cannot parse date, using it verbatim"
1008 macro does not follow the conventional format.
1009 .It Sy "date in the future, using it anyway"
1015 macro is more than a day ahead of the current system
1017 .It Sy "missing Os macro, using \(dq\(dq"
1019 The default or current system is not shown in this case.
1020 .It Sy "late prologue macro"
1026 macro occurs after some non-prologue macro, but still takes effect.
1027 .It Sy "prologue macros out of order"
1029 The prologue macros are not given in the conventional order
1033 All three macros are used even when given in another order.
1035 .Ss Warnings regarding document structure
1037 .It Sy ".so is fragile, better use ln(1)"
1039 Including files only works when the parser program runs with the correct
1040 current working directory.
1041 .It Sy "no document body"
1043 The document body contains neither text nor macros.
1044 An empty document is shown, consisting only of a header and a footer line.
1045 .It Sy "content before first section header"
1047 Some macros or text precede the first
1052 The offending macros and text are parsed and added to the top level
1053 of the syntax tree, outside any section block.
1054 .It Sy "first section is not NAME"
1056 The argument of the first
1064 .It Sy "NAME section without Nm before Nd"
1066 The NAME section does not contain any
1068 child macro before the first
1071 .It Sy "NAME section without description"
1073 The NAME section lacks the mandatory
1076 .It Sy "description not at the end of NAME"
1078 The NAME section does contain an
1080 child macro, but other content follows it.
1081 .It Sy "bad NAME section content"
1083 The NAME section contains plain text or macros other than
1087 .It Sy "missing comma before name"
1089 The NAME section contains an
1091 macro that is neither the first one nor preceded by a comma.
1092 .It Sy "missing description line, using \(dq\(dq"
1096 macro lacks the required argument.
1097 The title line of the manual will end after the dash.
1098 .It Sy "description line outside NAME section"
1102 macro appears outside the NAME section.
1103 The arguments are printed anyway and the following text is used for
1105 but none of that behaviour is portable.
1106 .It Sy "sections out of conventional order"
1108 A standard section occurs after another section it usually precedes.
1109 All section titles are used as given,
1110 and the order of sections is not changed.
1111 .It Sy "duplicate section title"
1113 The same standard section title occurs more than once.
1114 .It Sy "unexpected section"
1116 A standard section header occurs in a section of the manual
1117 where it normally isn't useful.
1118 .It Sy "cross reference to self"
1122 macro refers to a name and section matching the section of the present
1123 manual page and a name mentioned in an
1125 macro in the NAME or SYNOPSIS section, or in an
1129 macro in the SYNOPSIS.
1136 .It Sy "unusual Xr order"
1138 In the SEE ALSO section, an
1140 macro with a lower section number follows one with a higher number,
1143 macros referring to the same section are out of alphabetical order.
1144 .It Sy "unusual Xr punctuation"
1146 In the SEE ALSO section, punctuation between two
1148 macros differs from a single comma, or there is trailing punctuation
1152 .It Sy "AUTHORS section without An macro"
1154 An AUTHORS sections contains no
1156 macros, or only empty ones.
1157 Probably, there are author names lacking markup.
1159 .Ss "Warnings related to macros and nesting"
1161 .It Sy "obsolete macro"
1165 manual for replacements.
1166 .It Sy "macro neither callable nor escaped"
1168 The name of a macro that is not callable appears on a macro line.
1169 It is printed verbatim.
1170 If the intention is to call it, move it to its own input line;
1171 otherwise, escape it by prepending
1173 .It Sy "skipping paragraph macro"
1176 documents, this happens
1179 at the beginning and end of sections and subsections
1181 right before non-compact lists and displays
1183 at the end of items in non-column, non-compact lists
1185 and for multiple consecutive paragraph macros.
1189 documents, it happens
1201 macros having neither head nor body arguments
1212 .It Sy "moving paragraph macro out of list"
1216 list contains a trailing paragraph macro.
1217 The paragraph macro is moved after the end of the list.
1218 .It Sy "skipping no-space macro"
1220 An input line begins with an
1222 macro, or the next argument after an
1224 macro is an isolated closing delimiter.
1225 The macro is ignored.
1226 .It Sy "blocks badly nested"
1228 If two blocks intersect, one should completely contain the other.
1229 Otherwise, rendered output is likely to look strange in any output
1230 format, and rendering in SGML-based output formats is likely to be
1231 outright wrong because such languages do not support badly nested
1233 Typical examples of badly nested blocks are
1234 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bo \&Ac \&Bc
1236 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bq \&Ac .
1244 .It Sy "nested displays are not portable"
1251 display occurs nested inside another
1256 but fails with most other implementations.
1257 .It Sy "moving content out of list"
1261 list block contains text or macros before the first
1264 The offending children are moved before the beginning of the list.
1265 .It Sy "first macro on line"
1270 macro occurs as the first macro on a line, which is not portable.
1271 .It Sy "line scope broken"
1273 While parsing the next-line scope of the previous macro,
1274 another macro is found that prematurely terminates the previous one.
1275 The previous, interrupted macro is deleted from the parse tree.
1277 .Ss "Warnings related to missing arguments"
1279 .It Sy "skipping empty request"
1281 The macro name is missing from a macro definition request,
1284 control statement or operation keyword lacks its required argument.
1285 .It Sy "conditional request controls empty scope"
1287 A conditional request is only useful if any of the following
1288 follows it on the same logical input line:
1293 keyword to open a multi-line scope.
1295 A request or macro or some text, resulting in a single-line scope.
1297 The immediate end of the logical line without any intervening whitespace,
1298 resulting in next-line scope.
1300 Here, a conditional request is followed by trailing whitespace only,
1301 and there is no other content on its logical input line.
1302 Note that it doesn't matter whether the logical input line is split
1303 across multiple physical input lines using
1305 line continuation characters.
1306 This is one of the rare cases
1307 where trailing whitespace is syntactically significant.
1308 The conditional request controls a scope containing whitespace only,
1309 so it is unlikely to have a significant effect,
1310 except that it may control a following
1313 .It Sy "skipping empty macro"
1315 The indicated macro has no arguments and hence no effect.
1316 .It Sy "empty block"
1328 block contains nothing in its body and will produce no output.
1329 .It Sy "empty argument, using 0n"
1331 The required width is missing after
1338 .It Sy "missing display type, using -ragged"
1342 macro is invoked without the required display type.
1343 .It Sy "list type is not the first argument"
1347 macro, at least one other argument precedes the type argument.
1350 utility copes with any argument order, but some other
1352 implementations do not.
1353 .It Sy "missing -width in -tag list, using 8n"
1362 .It Sy "missing utility name, using \(dq\(dq"
1366 macro is called without an argument before
1368 has first been called with an argument.
1369 .It Sy "missing function name, using \(dq\(dq"
1373 macro is called without an argument.
1374 No function name is printed.
1375 .It Sy "empty head in list item"
1387 macro lacks the required argument.
1388 The item head is left empty.
1389 .It Sy "empty list item"
1401 An empty list item is shown.
1402 .It Sy "missing argument, using next line"
1408 list has no arguments.
1411 uses the text or macros of the following line, if any, for the cell,
1412 other formatters may misformat the list.
1413 .It Sy "missing font type, using \efR"
1417 macro has no argument.
1418 It switches to the default font.
1419 .It Sy "unknown font type, using \efR"
1423 argument is invalid.
1424 The default font is used instead.
1425 .It Sy "nothing follows prefix"
1429 macro has no argument, or only one argument and no macro follows
1430 on the same input line.
1431 This defeats its purpose; in particular, spacing is not suppressed
1432 before the text or macros following on the next input line.
1433 .It Sy "empty reference block"
1437 macro is immediately followed by an
1439 macro on the next input line.
1440 Such an empty block does not produce any output.
1441 .It Sy "missing section argument"
1445 macro lacks its second, section number argument.
1446 The first argument, i.e. the name, is printed, but without subsequent
1448 .It Sy "missing -std argument, adding it"
1454 macro lacks the required
1461 even when it is not specified, but other implementations may not.
1462 .It Sy "missing option string, using \(dq\(dq"
1466 macro is invoked without any argument.
1467 An empty pair of square brackets is shown.
1468 .It Sy "missing resource identifier, using \(dq\(dq"
1474 macro is invoked without any argument.
1475 An empty pair of angle brackets is shown.
1476 .It Sy "missing eqn box, using \(dq\(dq"
1478 A diacritic mark or a binary operator is found,
1479 but there is nothing to the left of it.
1480 An empty box is inserted.
1482 .Ss "Warnings related to bad macro arguments"
1484 .It Sy "duplicate argument"
1490 macro has more than one
1497 All but the last instances of these arguments are ignored.
1498 .It Sy "skipping duplicate argument"
1502 macro has more than one
1507 All but the first of these arguments are ignored.
1508 .It Sy "skipping duplicate display type"
1512 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1513 .It Sy "skipping duplicate list type"
1517 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1518 .It Sy "skipping -width argument"
1532 .It Sy "wrong number of cells"
1535 list, the number of tabs or
1537 macros is less than the number expected from the list header line
1538 or exceeds the expected number by more than one.
1539 Missing cells remain empty, and all cells exceeding the number of
1540 columns are joined into one single cell.
1541 .It Sy "unknown AT&T UNIX version"
1545 macro has an invalid argument.
1546 It is used verbatim, with
1549 .It Sy "comma in function argument"
1555 macro contains a comma; it should probably be split into two arguments.
1556 .It Sy "parenthesis in function name"
1558 The first argument of an
1562 macro contains an opening or closing parenthesis; that's probably wrong,
1563 parentheses are added automatically.
1564 .It Sy "unknown library name"
1568 macro has an unknown name argument and will be rendered as
1569 .Qq library Dq Ar name .
1570 .It Sy "invalid content in Rs block"
1574 block contains plain text or non-% macros.
1575 The bogus content is left in the syntax tree.
1576 Formatting may be poor.
1577 .It Sy "invalid Boolean argument"
1581 macro has an argument other than
1585 The invalid argument is moved out of the macro, which leaves the macro
1586 empty, causing it to toggle the spacing mode.
1587 .It Sy "unknown font, skipping request"
1595 layout modifier has an unknown
1598 .It Sy "odd number of characters in request"
1602 request contains an odd number of characters.
1603 The last character is mapped to the blank character.
1605 .Ss "Warnings related to plain text"
1607 .It Sy "blank line in fill mode, using .sp"
1609 The meaning of blank input lines is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1610 In fill mode, line breaks of text input lines are not supposed to be
1612 However, for compatibility with groff, blank lines in fill mode
1616 .It Sy "tab in filled text"
1618 The meaning of tab characters is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1619 In fill mode, whitespace is not supposed to be significant
1620 on text input lines.
1621 As an implementation dependent choice, tab characters on text lines
1622 are passed through to the formatters in any case.
1623 Given that the text before the tab character will be filled,
1624 it is hard to predict which tab stop position the tab will advance to.
1625 .It Sy "new sentence, new line"
1627 A new sentence starts in the middle of a text line.
1628 Start it on a new input line to help formatters produce correct spacing.
1629 .It Sy "invalid escape sequence"
1631 An escape sequence has an invalid opening argument delimiter, lacks the
1632 closing argument delimiter, or the argument has too few characters.
1633 If the argument is incomplete,
1637 expand to an empty string,
1643 to the length of the incomplete argument.
1644 All other invalid escape sequences are ignored.
1645 .It Sy "undefined string, using \(dq\(dq"
1647 If a string is used without being defined before,
1648 its value is implicitly set to the empty string.
1649 However, defining strings explicitly before use
1650 keeps the code more readable.
1652 .Ss "Warnings related to tables"
1654 .It Sy "tbl line starts with span"
1656 The first cell in a table layout line is a horizontal span
1658 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1659 .It Sy "tbl column starts with span"
1661 The first line of a table layout specification
1662 requests a vertical span
1664 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1665 .It Sy "skipping vertical bar in tbl layout"
1667 A table layout specification contains more than two consecutive vertical bars.
1668 A double bar is printed, all additional bars are discarded.
1670 .Ss "Errors related to tables"
1672 .It Sy "non-alphabetic character in tbl options"
1674 The table options line contains a character other than a letter,
1675 blank, or comma where the beginning of an option name is expected.
1676 The character is ignored.
1677 .It Sy "skipping unknown tbl option"
1679 The table options line contains a string of letters that does not
1680 match any known option name.
1681 The word is ignored.
1682 .It Sy "missing tbl option argument"
1684 A table option that requires an argument is not followed by an
1685 opening parenthesis, or the opening parenthesis is immediately
1686 followed by a closing parenthesis.
1687 The option is ignored.
1688 .It Sy "wrong tbl option argument size"
1690 A table option argument contains an invalid number of characters.
1691 Both the option and the argument are ignored.
1692 .It Sy "empty tbl layout"
1694 A table layout specification is completely empty,
1695 specifying zero lines and zero columns.
1696 As a fallback, a single left-justified column is used.
1697 .It Sy "invalid character in tbl layout"
1699 A table layout specification contains a character that can neither
1700 be interpreted as a layout key character nor as a layout modifier,
1701 or a modifier precedes the first key.
1702 The invalid character is discarded.
1703 .It Sy "unmatched parenthesis in tbl layout"
1705 A table layout specification contains an opening parenthesis,
1706 but no matching closing parenthesis.
1707 The rest of the input line, starting from the parenthesis, has no effect.
1708 .It Sy "tbl without any data cells"
1710 A table does not contain any data cells.
1711 It will probably produce no output.
1712 .It Sy "ignoring data in spanned tbl cell"
1714 A table cell is marked as a horizontal span
1718 in the table layout, but it contains data.
1719 The data is ignored.
1720 .It Sy "ignoring extra tbl data cells"
1722 A data line contains more cells than the corresponding layout line.
1723 The data in the extra cells is ignored.
1724 .It Sy "data block open at end of tbl"
1726 A data block is opened with
1728 but never closed with a matching
1730 The remaining data lines of the table are all put into one cell,
1731 and any remaining cells stay empty.
1733 .Ss "Errors related to roff, mdoc, and man code"
1735 .It Sy "duplicate prologue macro"
1737 One of the prologue macros occurs more than once.
1738 The last instance overrides all previous ones.
1739 .It Sy "skipping late title macro"
1743 macro appears after the first non-prologue macro.
1744 Traditional formatters cannot handle this because
1745 they write the page header before parsing the document body.
1746 Even though this technical restriction does not apply to
1748 traditional semantics is preserved.
1749 The late macro is discarded including its arguments.
1750 .It Sy "input stack limit exceeded, infinite loop?"
1752 Explicit recursion limits are implemented for the following features,
1753 in order to prevent infinite loops:
1756 expansion of nested escape sequences
1757 including expansion of strings and number registers,
1759 expansion of nested user-defined macros,
1765 When a limit is hit, the output is incorrect, typically losing
1766 some content, but the parser can continue.
1767 .It Sy "skipping bad character"
1768 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1769 The input file contains a byte that is not a printable
1772 The message mentions the character number.
1773 The offending byte is replaced with a question mark
1775 Consider editing the input file to replace the byte with an ASCII
1776 transliteration of the intended character.
1777 .It Sy "skipping unknown macro"
1778 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1779 The first identifier on a request or macro line is neither recognized as a
1781 request, nor as a user-defined macro, nor, respectively, as an
1786 It may be mistyped or unsupported.
1787 The request or macro is discarded including its arguments.
1788 .It Sy "skipping insecure request"
1790 An input file attempted to run a shell command
1791 or to read or write an external file.
1792 Such attempts are denied for security reasons.
1793 .It Sy "skipping item outside list"
1797 macro occurs outside any
1802 delimiter occurs outside any pile.
1803 It is discarded including its arguments.
1804 .It Sy "skipping column outside column list"
1808 macro occurs outside any
1811 It is discarded including its arguments.
1812 .It Sy "skipping end of block that is not open"
1813 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1814 Various syntax elements can only be used to explicitly close blocks
1815 that have previously been opened.
1818 block closing macro, a
1825 right delimiter or closing brace, or the end of an equation, table, or
1827 conditional request is encountered but no matching block is open.
1828 The offending request or macro is discarded.
1829 .It Sy "fewer RS blocks open, skipping"
1833 macro is invoked with an argument, but less than the specified number of
1839 .It Sy "inserting missing end of block"
1843 macros as well as tables require explicit closing by dedicated macros.
1844 A block that doesn't support bad nesting
1845 ends before all of its children are properly closed.
1846 The open child nodes are closed implicitly.
1847 .It Sy "appending missing end of block"
1848 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1849 At the end of the document, an explicit
1857 block, an equation, table, or
1859 conditional or ignore block is still open.
1860 The open block is closed implicitly.
1861 .It Sy "escaped character not allowed in a name"
1863 Macro, string and register identifiers consist of printable,
1864 non-whitespace ASCII characters.
1865 Escape sequences and characters and strings expressed in terms of them
1866 cannot form part of a name.
1867 The first argument of an
1875 request, or any argument of an
1877 request, or the name of a request or user defined macro being called,
1878 is terminated by an escape sequence.
1884 the request has no effect at all.
1891 what was parsed up to this point is used as the arguments to the request,
1892 and the rest of the input line is discarded including the escape sequence.
1893 When parsing for a request or a user-defined macro name to be called,
1894 only the escape sequence is discarded.
1895 The characters preceding it are used as the request or macro name,
1896 the characters following it are used as the arguments to the request or macro.
1897 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: Bd -file"
1899 For security reasons, the
1901 macro does not support the
1904 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1905 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1906 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1907 The argument is ignored including the file name following it.
1908 .It Sy "skipping display without arguments"
1912 block macro does not have any arguments.
1913 The block is discarded, and the block content is displayed in
1914 whatever mode was active before the block.
1915 .It Sy "missing list type, using -item"
1919 macro fails to specify the list type.
1920 .It Sy "argument is not numeric, using 1"
1924 request is not a number.
1925 .It Sy "missing manual name, using \(dq\(dq"
1929 or any call in the NAME section, lacks the required argument.
1930 .It Sy "uname(3) system call failed, using UNKNOWN"
1934 macro is called without arguments, and the
1939 can be compiled with
1941 .Fl D Cm OSNAME=\(dq\e\(dq Ar string Cm \e\(dq\(dq .
1943 .It Sy "unknown standard specifier"
1947 macro has an unknown argument and is discarded.
1948 .It Sy "skipping request without numeric argument"
1957 statement has a non-numeric or negative argument or no argument at all.
1958 The invalid request or statement is ignored.
1959 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: .so with absolute path or \(dq..\(dq"
1961 For security reasons,
1965 file inclusion requests only with relative paths
1966 and only without ascending to any parent directory.
1967 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1968 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1969 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1971 only shows the path as it appears behind
1973 .It Sy ".so request failed"
1977 request requires reading an external file, but the file could not be
1980 only shows the path as it appears behind
1982 .It Sy "skipping all arguments"
1983 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , roff
1999 macro in a list that don't support item heads, a
2018 block closing request is invoked with at least one argument.
2019 All arguments are ignored.
2020 .It Sy "skipping excess arguments"
2021 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
2022 A macro or request is invoked with too many arguments:
2023 .Bl -dash -offset 2n -width 2n -compact
2033 with more than one argument
2036 with another argument after
2042 with more than one argument or with a non-integer argument
2047 family with more than two arguments
2050 with more than three arguments
2053 with more than five arguments
2059 with invalid arguments
2061 The excess arguments are ignored.
2063 .Ss Unsupported features
2065 .It Sy "input too large"
2069 cannot handle input files larger than its arbitrary size limit
2070 of 2^31 bytes (2 Gigabytes).
2071 Since useful manuals are always small, this is not a problem in practice.
2072 Parsing is aborted as soon as the condition is detected.
2073 .It Sy "unsupported control character"
2075 An ASCII control character supported by other
2077 implementations but not by
2079 was found in an input file.
2080 It is replaced by a question mark.
2081 .It Sy "unsupported roff request"
2083 An input file contains a
2085 request supported by GNU troff or Heirloom troff but not by
2087 and it is likely that this will cause information loss
2088 or considerable misformatting.
2089 .It Sy "eqn delim option in tbl"
2091 The options line of a table defines equation delimiters.
2092 Any equation source code contained in the table will be printed unformatted.
2093 .It Sy "unsupported table layout modifier"
2095 A table layout specification contains an
2098 The modifier is discarded.
2099 .It Sy "ignoring macro in table"
2100 .Pq tbl , mdoc , man
2101 A table contains an invocation of an
2105 macro or of an undefined macro.
2106 The macro is ignored, and its arguments are handled
2107 as if they were a text line.
2121 utility first appeared in
2135 utility was written by
2136 .An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv
2137 and is maintained by
2138 .An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org .
git.ckatri.com / mandoc.git / blob