NEWS

   1 $Id: NEWS,v 1.6 2014/08/11 01:39:00 schwarze Exp $
   2
   3 This file lists the most important changes in the mdocml.bsd.lv distribution.
   4
   5 Changes in version 1.13.1, released on August 10, 2014
   6
   7     --- MAJOR NEW FEATURES ---
   8  * A complete apropos(1)/makewhatis(8)/man.cgi(8) suite
   9    based on SQLite3 is now included.
  10  * The roff(7) parser now provides an almost complete implementation
  11    of numerical expressions.
  12  * Warning and error messages have been improved in many ways.
  13    Almost all fatal errors were downgraded to normal errors and some
  14    even to warnings.  Almost all messages now mention the macro where
  15    the issue is detected and many indicate the workaround employed.
  16    The mandoc(1) manual now includes a list explaining all messages.
  17     --- MINOR NEW FEATURES ---
  18  * The roff(7) parser now supports the .ami (append to macro with
  19    indirectly specified name), .as (append to user-defined
  20    string), .dei (define macro with indirectly specified name),
  21    .ll (line length), and .rr (remove register) requests.
  22  * The roff(7) parser now supports string comparison and numerical
  23    conditionals in the .if and .ie requests.
  24  * The roff parser now fully supports the \B (validate numerical
  25    expression) and partially supports the \w (measure text width)
  26    escape sequences.
  27  * The terminal formatter now supports the \: (optional line break)
  28    escape sequence.
  29  * The roff parser now supports expansion of user-defined strings
  30    involving indirect references.
  31  * The roff(7) parser now handles some pre-defined read-only
  32    number registers that occur in the pod2man(1) preamble.
  33  * For backward compatibility, the mdoc(7) parser and formatters
  34    now support the obsolete macros .En, .Es, .Fr, and .Ot.
  35  * The mdoc(7) formatter non partially supports .Bd -centered.
  36  * tbl(7) now handles leading and trailing vertical lines.
  37  * The build system now provides fallback versions of strcasestr(3)
  38    and strsep(3) for systems lacking them.
  39  * The mdoc(7) manual now explains how various standards
  40    supported by the .St macro are related to each other.
  41     --- BUGFIXES ---
  42  * In the roff(7) parser, several bugs were fixed with respect
  43    to closing conditional blocks on macro lines.
  44  * Parsing of roff(7) identifiers and escape sequences was improved
  45    in multiple respects.
  46  * In the mdoc(7) parser, the handling of defective document
  47    prologues was improved in multiple ways.
  48  * The mdoc(7) parser no longer skips content before the first section
  49    header, and it no longer deletes non-.% content from .Rs blocks.
  50  * In the mdoc(7) parser, a crash was fixed related to weird .Sh headers.
  51  * In the mdoc(7) parser, handling of .Sm with missing or invalid
  52    arguments was corrected.
  53  * In the mdoc(7) parser, trailing punctuation at the end of partial
  54    implicit macros no longer triggers end-of-sentence spacing.
  55  * In the terminal formatter, two crashes were fixed: one triggered by
  56    excessive indentation and another by excessively long .Nm arguments.
  57  * In the terminal formatter, a floating point rounding bug was
  58    fixed that sometimes caused an off-by-one error in indentation.
  59  * In the UTF-8 formatter, rendering of accents, breakable hyphens,
  60    and non-breakable spaces was corrected.
  61  * In the HTML formatter, encoding of special characters was
  62    corrected in multiple respects.
  63  * In the mdoc(7) formatter, rendering of .Ex and .Rv was
  64    improved for various edge cases.
  65  * In the mdoc(7) formatter, handling of empty .Bl -inset item
  66    heads was improved.
  67  * In the man(7) formatter, some bugs were fixed with respect
  68    to same-line detection in the context of .TP and .nf macros,
  69    and the indentation of .IP and .TP blocks was improved.
  70  * The mandoc(3) library no longer prints to stderr.
  71     --- THANKS TO ---
  72    Abhinav Upadhyay (NetBSD), Andreas Voegele, Anthony Bentley (OpenBSD),
  73    Christian Weisgerber (OpenBSD), Havard Eidnes (NetBSD), Jan Stary,
  74    Jason McIntyre (OpenBSD), Jeremie Courreges-Anglas (OpenBSD),
  75    Joerg Sonnenberger (NetBSD), Juan Francisco Cantero Hurtado (OpenBSD),
  76    Marc Espie (OpenBSD), Matthias Scheler (NetBSD), Pascal Stumpf (OpenBSD),
  77    Paul Onyschuk (Alpine Linux), Sebastien Marie, Steffen Nurpmeso,
  78    Stuart Henderson (OpenBSD), Ted Unangst (OpenBSD), Theo de Raadt (OpenBSD),
  79    Thomas Klausner (NetBSD), and Ulrich Spoerlein (FreeBSD)
  80    for reporting bugs and missing features.
  81
  82 Changes in version 1.12.3, released on December 31, 2013
  83
  84  * In the mdoc(7) SYNOPSIS, line breaks and hanging indentation
  85    now work correctly for .Fo/.Fa/.Fc and .Fn blocks.
  86    Thanks to Franco Fichtner for doing part of the work.
  87  * The mdoc(7) .Bk macro got some addititonal bugfixes.
  88  * In mdoc(7) macro arguments, double quotes can now be quoted
  89    by doubling them, just like in man(7).
  90    Thanks to Tsugutomo ENAMI for the patch.
  91  * At the end of man(7) macro lines, end-of-sentence spacing
  92    now works.  Thanks to Franco Fichtner for the patch.
  93  * For backward compatibility, the man(7) parser now supports the
  94    man-ext .UR/.UE (uniform resource identifier) block macros.
  95  * The man(7) parser now handles closing blocks that are not open
  96    more gracefully.
  97  * The man(7) parser now ignores blank lines right after .SH and .SS.
  98  * In the man(7) formatter, reset indentation when leaving a block,
  99    not just when entering the next one.
 100  * The roff(7) .nr request now supports incrementing and decrementing
 101    number registers and stops parsing the number right before the
 102    first non-digit character.
 103  * The roff(7) parser now supports the alternative escape sequence
 104    syntax \C'uXXXX' for Unicode characters.
 105  * The roff(7) parser now parses and ignores the .fam (font family)
 106    and .hw (hyphenation points) requests and the \d and \u escape
 107    sequences.
 108  * The roff(7) manual got a new ESCAPE SEQUENCE REFERENCE.
 109
 110 Changes in version 1.12.2, released on Oktober 5, 2013
 111
 112  * The mdoc(7) to man(7) converter, to be called as mandoc -Tman,
 113    is now fully functional.
 114  * The mandoc(1) utility now supports the -Ios (default operating system)
 115    input option, and the -Tutf8 output mode now actually works.
 116  * The mandocdb(8) utility no longer truncates existing databases when
 117    starting to build new ones, but only replaces them when the build
 118    actually succeeds.
 119  * The man(7) parser now supports the PD macro (paragraph distance),
 120    and (for GNU man-ext compatibility only) EX (example block) and EE
 121    (example end).  Plus several bugfixes regarding indentation, line
 122    breaks, and vertical spacing, and regarding RS following TP.
 123  * The roff(7) parser now supports the \f(BI (bold+italic) font escape,
 124    the \z (zero cursor advance) escape and the cc (change control
 125    character) and it (input line trap) requests. Plus bugfixes regarding
 126    the \t (tab) escape, nested escape sequences, and conditional requests.
 127  * In mdoc(7), several bugs were fixed related to UTF-8 output of quoting
 128    enclosures, delimiter handling, list indentation and horizontal and
 129    vertical spacing, formatting of the Lk, %U, and %C macros, plus some
 130    bugfixes related to the handling of syntax errors like badly nested
 131    font blocks, stray Ta macros outside column lists, unterminated It Xo
 132    blocks, and non-text children of Nm blocks.
 133  * In tbl(7), the width of horizontal spans and the vertical spacing
 134    around tables was corrected, and in man(7) files, a crash was fixed
 135    that was triggered by some particular unclosed T{ macros.
 136  * For mandoc developers, we now provide a tbl(3) library manual and
 137    gmdiff, a very small, very simplistic groff-versus-mandoc output
 138    comparison tool.
 139  * Provide this NEWS file.
 140
 141 Changes in version 1.12.1, released on March 23, 2012
 142
 143  * Significant work on apropos(1) and mandocdb(8). These tools are now
 144    much more robust.  A whatis(1) implementation is now handled as an
 145    apropos(1) mode.  These tools are also able to minimally handle
 146    pre-formatted pages, that is, those already formatted by another
 147    utility such as GNU troff.
 148  * The man.cgi(7) script is also now available for wider testing.
 149    It interfaces with mandocdb(8) manuals cached by catman(8).
 150    HTML output is generated on-the-fly by libmandoc or internal
 151    methods to convert pre-formatted pages.
 152  * The mailing list archive for the discuss and tech lists are being
 153    hosted by Gmane at gmane.comp.tools.mdocml.user and
 154    gmane.comp.tools.mdocml.devel, respectively.
 155
 156 Changes in version 1.12.0, released on October 8, 2011
 157
 158  * This version features a new, work-in-progress mandoc(1) output mode:
 159    -Tman.  This mode allows a system maintainer to distribute man(7)
 160    media for older systems that may not natively support mdoc(7), such
 161    as old Solaris systems.
 162  * The -Ofragment option was added to mandoc(1)'s -Thtml and -Txhtml modes.
 163  * While adding features, an apropos(1) utility has been merged from the
 164    mandoc-tools sandbox.  This interfaces with mandocdb(8) for semantic
 165    search of manual content.  apropos(1) is different from the traditional
 166    apropos primarily in allowing keyword search (such as for functions,
 167    utilities, etc.) and regular expressions.  Note that the calling
 168    syntax for apropos is likely to change as it settles down.
 169  * In documentation news, the mdoc(7) and man(7) manuals have been
 170    made considerably more readable by adding MACRO OVERVIEW sections, by
 171    moving the gory details of the LANGUAGE SYNTAX to the roff(7) manual,
 172    and by moving the very technical MACRO SYNTAX sections down to the
 173    bottom of the page.
 174  * Furthermore, for tbl(7), the -Tascii mode horizontal spacing of tables
 175    was rewritten completely.  It is now compatible with groff(1), both
 176    with and without frames and rulers.
 177  * Nesting of indented blocks is now supported in man(7), and several
 178    bugs were fixed regarding indentation and alignment.
 179  * The page headers in mdoc(7) are now nicer for very long titles.
 180
 181 Changes in version 1.11.7, released on September 2, 2011
 182
 183  * Added demandoc(1) utility for stripping away macros and escapes.
 184    This replaces the historical deroff(1) utility.
 185  * Also improved the mdoc(7) and man(7) manuals.
 186
 187 Changes in version 1.11.6, released on August 16, 2011
 188
 189  * Handling of tr macro in roff(7) implemented.  This makes Perl
 190    documentation much more readable.  Hyphenation is also now enabled in
 191    man(7) format documents.  Many other general improvements have been
 192    implemented.
 193
 194 Changes in version 1.11.5, released on July 24, 2011
 195
 196  * Significant eqn(7) improvements.  mdocml can now parse arbitrary eqn
 197    input (although few GNU extensions are accepted, nor is mixing
 198    low-level roff with eqn).  See the eqn(7) manual for details.
 199    For the time being, equations are rendered as simple in-line text.
 200    The equation parser satisfies the language specified in the
 201    Second Edition User's Guide:
 202    http://www.kohala.com/start/troff/v7man/eqn/eqn2e.ps
 203
 204 Changes in version 1.11.4, released on July 12, 2011
 205
 206  * Bug-fixes and clean-ups across all systems, especially in mandocdb(8)
 207    and the man(7) parser.  This release was significantly assisted by
 208    participants in OpenBSD's c2k11.  Thanks!
 209
 210 Changes in version 1.11.3, released on May 26, 2011
 211
 212  * Introduce locale-encoding of output with the -Tlocale output option and
 213    Unicode escaped-character input.  See mandoc(1) and mandoc_char(7),
 214    respectively, for details.  This allows for non-ASCII characters (e.g.,
 215    \[u5000]) to be rendered in the locale's encoding, if said environment
 216    supports wide-character encoding (if it does not, -Tascii is used
 217    instead).  Locale support can be turned off at compile time by removing
 218    -DUSE_WCHAR in the Makefile, in which case -Tlocale is always a synonym
 219    for -Tascii.
 220  * Furthermore, multibyte-encoded documents, such as those in UTF-8, may
 221    be on-the-fly recoded into mandoc(1) input by using the newly-added
 222    preconv(1) utility.  Note: in the future, this feature may be
 223    integrated into mandoc(1).
 224
 225 Changes in version 1.11.2, released on May 12, 2011
 226
 227  * Corrected some installation issues in version 1.11.1.
 228  * Further migration to libmandoc.
 229  * Initial public release (this utility is very much under development)
 230    of mandocdb(8).  This utility produces keyword databases of manual
 231    content, which features semantic querying of manual content.
 232
 233 Changes in version 1.11.1, released on April 4, 2011
 234
 235  * The earlier libroff, libmdoc, and libman soup have been merged into
 236    a single library, libmandoc, which manages all aspects of parsing
 237    real manuals, from line-handling to tbl(7) parsing.
 238  * As usual, many general fixes and improvements have also occurred.
 239    In particular, a great deal of redundancy and superfluous code has
 240    been removed with the merging of the backend libraries.
 241  * see also the changes in 1.10.10
 242
 243 Changes in version 1.10.10, March 20, 2011, NOT released
 244
 245  * Initial eqn(7) functionality is in place.  For the time being,
 246    this is limited to the recognition of equation blocks;
 247    future version of mdocml will expand upon this framework.
 248
 249 Changes in version 1.10.9, released on January 7, 2011
 250
 251  * Many back-end fixes have been implemented: argument handling (quoting),
 252    man(7) improvements, error/warning classes, and many more.
 253  * Initial tbl(7) functionality (see the "TS", "TE", and "T&" macros in
 254    the roff(7) manual) has been merged from tbl.bsd.lv.  Output is still
 255    minimal, especially for -Thtml and -Txhtml, but manages to at least
 256    display data.  This means that mandoc(1) now has built-in support
 257    for two troff preprocessors via libroff: soelim(1) and tbl(1).
 258
 259 Changes in version 1.10.8, released on December 24, 2010
 260
 261  * Overhauled the -Thtml and -Txhtml output modes.  They now display
 262    readable output in arbitrary browsers, including text-based ones like
 263    lynx(1).  See HTML and XHTML manuals in the DOCUMENTATION section
 264    for examples.  Attention: available style-sheet classes have been
 265    considerably changed!  See the example.style.css file for details.
 266    Lastly, libmdoc and libman have been cleaned up and reduced in size
 267    and complexity.
 268  * see also the changes in 1.10.7
 269
 270 Changes in version 1.10.7, December 6, 2010, NOT released
 271
 272  Significant improvements merged from OpenBSD downstream, including:
 273  * many new roff(7) components,
 274  * in-line implementation of troff's soelim(1),
 275  * broken-block handling,
 276  * overhauled error classifications, and
 277  * cleaned up handling of error conditions.
 278
 279 Changes in version 1.10.6, released on September 27, 2010
 280
 281  * Calling conventions for mandoc(1) have changed: -W improved and -f
 282    deprecated.
 283  * Non-ASCII characters are also now uniformly discarded.
 284  * Lots of documentation improvements.
 285  * Many incremental fixes accomodating for groff's more interesting
 286    productions.
 287  * Lastly, pod2man(1) preambles are now fully accepted after some
 288    considerable roff(7) and special character support.
 289
 290 Changes in version 1.10.5, released on July 27, 2010
 291
 292  * Primarily a bug-fix and polish release, but including -Tpdf support
 293    in mandoc(1) by way of "Summer of Code".  Highlights:
 294  * fix "Sm" and "Bd" handling
 295  * fix end-of-sentence handling for embedded sentences
 296  * polish man(7) documentation
 297  * document all mdoc(7) macros
 298  * polish mandoc(1) -Tps output
 299  * lots of internal clean-ups in character escapes
 300  * un-break literal contexts in man(7) documents
 301  * improve -Thtml output for -man
 302  * add mandoc(1) -Tpdf support
 303
 304 Changes in version 1.10.4, released on July 12, 2010
 305
 306  * Lots of features developed during both "Summer of Code" and the
 307    OpenBSD c2k10 hackathon:
 308  * minimal "ds" roff(7) symbols are supported
 309  * beautified SYNOPSIS section output
 310  * acceptance of scope-block breakage in mdoc(7)
 311  * clarify error message status
 312  * many minor bug-fixes and formatting issues resolved
 313  * see also changes in 1.10.3
 314
 315 Changes in version 1.10.3, June 29, 2010, NOT released
 316
 317  * variable font-width and paper-size support in mandoc(1) -Tps output
 318  * "Bk" mdoc(7) support
 319
 320 Changes in version 1.10.2, released on June 19, 2010
 321
 322  * Small release featuring text-decoration in -Tps output,
 323    a few minor relaxations of errors, and some optimisations.
 324
 325 Changes in version 1.10.1, released on June 7, 2010
 326
 327  * This primarily focusses on the "Bl" and "It" macros described in
 328    mdoc(7).  Multi-line column support is now fully compatible with groff,
 329    as are implicit list entries for columns.
 330  * Removed manuals(7) in favour of http://manpages.bsd.lv.
 331  * The way we handle the SYNOPSIS section (see the SYNOPSIS documentation
 332    in MANUAL STRUCTURE) has also been considerably simplified compared
 333    to groff's method.
 334  * Furthermore, the -Owidth=width output option has been added to -Tascii,
 335    see mandoc(1).
 336  * Lastly, initial PostScript output has been added with the -Tps option
 337    to mandoc(1).  It's brutally simple at the moment: fixed-font, with no
 338    font decorations.
 339
 340 Changes in version 1.10.0, released on May 29, 2010
 341
 342  * Release consisting of the results from the m2k10 hackathon and up-merge
 343    from OpenBSD.  This requires a significant note of thanks to Ingo
 344    Schwarze (OpenBSD) and Joerg Sonnenberger (NetBSD) for their hard work,
 345    and again to Joerg for hosting m2k10.  Highlights (mostly cribbed from
 346    Ingo's m2k10 report) follow in no particular order:
 347  * a libroff preprocessor in front of libmdoc and libman stripping out
 348    roff(7) instructions;
 349  * end-of-sentence (EOS) detection in free-form and macro lines;
 350  * correct handling of tab-separated columnar lists in mdoc(7);
 351  * improved main calling routines to optionally use mmap(3) for better
 352    performance;
 353  * cleaned up exiting when invoked as -Tlint or over multiple files
 354    with -fign-errors;
 355  * error and warning message handling re-written to be unified for
 356    libroff, libmdoc, and libman;
 357  * handling of badly-nested explicit-scoped macros;
 358  * improved free-form text parsing in libman and libmdoc;
 359  * significant GNU troff compatibility improvements in -Tascii,
 360    largely in terms of spacing;
 361  * a regression framework for making sure the many fragilities of GNU
 362    troff aren't trampled in subsequent work;
 363  * support for -Tascii breaking at hyphens encountered in free-form text;
 364  * and many more minor fixes and improvements
 365
 366 Changes in version 1.9.25, released on May 13, 2010
 367
 368  * Fixed handling of "\*(Ba" escape.
 369  * Backed out -fno-ign-chars (pointless complexity).
 370  * Fixed erroneous breaking of literal lines.
 371  * Fixed SYNOPSIS breaking lines before non-initial macros.
 372  * Changed default section ordering.
 373  * Most importantly, the framework for end-of-sentence double-spacing is
 374    in place, now implemented for the "end-of-sentence, end-of-line" rule.
 375  * This is a stable roll-back point before the mandoc hackathon in Rostock!
 376
 377 Changes in version 1.9.24, released on May 9, 2010
 378
 379  * Rolled back break-at-hyphen.
 380  * -DUGLY is now the default (no feature splits!).
 381  * Free-form text is not de-chunked any more: lines are passed
 382    whole-sale into the front-end, including whitespace.
 383  * Added mailing lists.
 384
 385 Changes in version 1.9.23, released on April 7, 2010
 386
 387  * mdocml has been linked to the OpenBSD build.
 388  * This version incorporates many small changes, mostly from patches
 389    by OpenBSD, allowing crufty manuals to slip by with warnings instead
 390    of erroring-out.
 391  * Some subtle semantic issues, such as punctuation scope, have also
 392    been fixed.
 393  * Lastly, some issues with -Thtml have been fixed, which prompted an
 394    update to the online manual pages style layout.
 395
 396 Changes in version 1.9.22, released on March 31, 2010
 397
 398  * Adjusted merge of the significant work by Ingo Schwarze
 399    in getting "Xo" blocks (block full implicit, e.g., "It"
 400    for non-columnar lists) to work properly.  This isn't
 401    enabled by default: you must specify -DUGLY as a compiler
 402    flag (see the Makefile for details).
 403
 404 Changes in version 1.9.20, released on March 30, 2010
 405
 406  * More efforts to get roff instructions in man(7) documents under
 407    control.  Note that roff instructions embedded in line-scoped,
 408    next-line macros (e.g. "B") are not supported.
 409  * Leading punctuation for mdoc(7) macros, such as "Fl ( ( a",
 410    are now correctly handled.
 411
 412 Changes in version 1.9.18, released on March 27, 2010
 413
 414  * Many fixes (largely pertaining to scope)
 415    and improvements (e.g., handling of apostrophe-control macros,
 416    which fixes the strange "BR" seen in some macro output)
 417    to handling roff instructions in man(7) documents.
 418
 419 Changes in version 1.9.17, released on March 25, 2010
 420
 421  * Accept perlpod(1) standard preamble.
 422  * Also accept (and discard) "de", "dei", "am", "ami", and "ig"
 423    roff macro blocks.
 424
 425 Changes in version 1.9.16, released on March 22, 2010
 426
 427  * Inspired by patches and bug reports by Ingo Schwarze,
 428    allowed man(7) to accept non-printing elements to be nested
 429    within next-line scopes, such as "br" within "B" or "TH",
 430    which is valid roff.
 431  * Longsoon architecture also noted and Makefile cleaned up.
 432
 433 Changes in version 1.9.15, released on February 18, 2010
 434
 435  * Moved to our new BSD.lv home.
 436  * XHTML is now an acceptable output mode for mandoc(1);
 437  * "Xr" made more compatible with groff;
 438  * "Vt" fixed when invoked in SYNOPSIS;
 439  * "\\" escape removed;
 440  * end-of-line white-space detected for all lines;
 441  * subtle bug fixed in list display for some modes;
 442  * compatibility layer checked in for compilation in diverse
 443    UNIX systems;
 444  * and column lengths handled correctly.
 445
 446 For older releases, see the ChangeLog files
 447 in http://mdocml.bsd.lv/snapshots/ .