1 .\" $Id: mandoc.1,v 1.159 2015/04/03 08:46:17 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: April 3 2015 $
23 .Nd format and display UNIX manuals
27 .Op Fl I Cm os Ns = Ns Ar name
39 manual pages for display.
47 text from stdin, implying
53 The options are as follows:
56 If the standard output is a terminal device and
60 to paginate the output, just like
64 Copy the formatted manual pages to the standard output without using
68 It can be specified to override
73 This overrides any earlier
78 .It Fl I Cm os Ns = Ns Ar name
79 Override the default operating system
89 Display only the SYNOPSIS lines.
93 Specify the input encoding.
101 If not specified, autodetection uses the first match:
102 .Bl -tag -width iso-8859-1
104 if the first three bytes of the input file
105 are the UTF-8 byte order mark (BOM, 0xefbbbf)
107 if the first or second line of the input file matches the
111 .D1 .\e" -*- Oo ...; Oc coding: Ar encoding ; No -*-
113 if the first non-ASCII byte in the file introduces a valid UTF-8 sequence
120 This overrides any earlier
128 Also reverts any earlier
133 .It Fl m Ns Ar format
137 for available formats.
141 Comma-separated output options.
146 for available formats.
150 Specify the minimum message
152 to be reported on the standard error output and to affect the exit status.
176 to exit after parsing a file that causes warnings or errors of at least
178 No formatted output will be produced from that file.
183 are requested, they can be joined with a comma, for example
184 .Fl W Cm error , Ns Cm stop .
186 Read input from zero or more files.
187 If unspecified, reads from stdin.
188 If multiple files are specified,
190 will halt with the first failed parse.
199 also supports the options
222 should only be used for legacy manuals.
226 which is also the default, determines encoding on-the-fly: if the first
233 parser is used; otherwise, the
238 files are specified with
240 each has its file-type determined this way.
241 If multiple files are
246 is specified, then this format is used exclusively.
250 utility accepts the following
252 arguments, which correspond to output modes:
253 .Bl -tag -width "-T locale"
255 Produce 7-bit ASCII output.
259 Produce HTML5, CSS1, and MathML output.
263 Parse only: produce no output.
267 Encode output using the current locale.
282 Produce PostScript output.
284 .Sx PostScript Output .
286 Produce an indented parse tree.
288 Encode output in the UTF\-8 multi-byte format.
292 This is a synonym for
296 If multiple input files are specified, these will be processed by the
297 corresponding filter in-order.
301 is rendered in standard 7-bit ASCII documented in
304 Font styles are applied by using back-spaced encoding such that an
308 .Sq _ Ns \e[bs] Ns c ,
311 is the back-space character number 8.
312 Emboldened characters are rendered as
313 .Sq c Ns \e[bs] Ns c .
315 The special characters documented in
317 are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent.
319 Output width is limited to 78 visible columns unless literal input lines
324 arguments are accepted:
326 .It Cm indent Ns = Ns Ar indent
327 The left margin for normal text is set to
329 blank characters instead of the default of five for
333 Increasing this is not recommended; it may result in degraded formatting,
334 for example overfull lines or ugly line breaks.
335 .It Cm width Ns = Ns Ar width
336 The output width is set to
338 which will normalise to \(>=58.
343 conforms to HTML5 using optional self-closing tags.
344 Default styles use only CSS1.
345 Equations rendered from
350 .Pa example.style.css
351 file documents style-sheet classes available for customising output.
352 If a style-sheet is not specified with
355 defaults to simple output (via an embedded style-sheet)
356 readable in any graphical or text-based web
359 Special characters are rendered in decimal-encoded UTF\-8.
363 arguments are accepted:
366 Omit the <!DOCTYPE> declaration and the <html>, <head>, and <body>
367 elements and only emit the subtree below the <body> element.
370 argument will be ignored.
371 This is useful when embedding manual content within existing documents.
372 .It Cm includes Ns = Ns Ar fmt
377 is used as a template for linked header files (usually via the
382 are replaced with the include filename.
383 The default is not to present a
385 .It Cm man Ns = Ns Ar fmt
389 .Ar ../html%S/%N.%S.html ,
390 is used as a template for linked manuals (usually via the
397 are replaced with the linked manual's name and section, respectively.
398 If no section is included, section 1 is assumed.
399 The default is not to
401 .It Cm style Ns = Ns Ar style.css
404 is used for an external style-sheet.
405 This must be a valid absolute or
409 Locale-depending output encoding is triggered with
413 This option is not available on all systems: systems without locale
414 support, or those whose internal representation is not natively UCS-4,
419 for font style specification and available command-line arguments.
421 Translate input format into
424 This is useful for distributing manual sources to legacy systems
431 is passed as input, it is translated into
433 If the input format is
435 the input is copied to the output, expanding any
439 The parser is also run, and as usual, the
443 are displayed before copying the input to the output.
445 PDF-1.1 output may be generated by
448 .Sx PostScript Output
451 arguments and defaults.
452 .Ss PostScript Output
455 Level-2 pages may be generated by
457 Output pages default to letter sized and are rendered in the Times font
459 Margins are calculated as 1/9 the page length and width.
462 Special characters are rendered as in
467 arguments are accepted:
469 .It Cm paper Ns = Ns Ar name
479 You may also manually specify dimensions as
481 width by height in millimetres.
482 If an unknown value is encountered,
489 to force a UTF\-8 locale.
492 for details and options.
494 .Bl -tag -width MANPAGER
496 Any non-empty value of the environment variable
498 will be used instead of the standard pagination program,
501 Specifies the pagination program to use when
504 If neither PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined,
512 utility exits with one of the following values, controlled by the message
518 .Bl -tag -width Ds -compact
520 No warnings or errors occurred, or those that did were ignored because
521 they were lower than the requested
524 At least one warning occurred, but no error, and
528 At least one parsing error occurred,
529 but no unsupported feature was encountered, and
535 At least one unsupported feature was encountered, and
542 Invalid command line arguments were specified.
543 No input files have been read.
545 An operating system error occurred, for example exhaustion
546 of memory, file descriptors, or process table entries.
549 to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file.
557 To page manuals to the terminal:
559 .Dl $ mandoc \-W all,stop mandoc.1 2\*(Gt&1 | less
560 .Dl $ mandoc mandoc.1 mdoc.3 mdoc.7 | less
562 To produce HTML manuals with
566 .Dl $ mandoc \-T html -O style=style.css mdoc.7 \*(Gt mdoc.7.html
568 To check over a large set of manuals:
570 .Dl $ mandoc \-T lint \(gafind /usr/src -name \e*\e.[1-9]\(ga
572 To produce a series of PostScript manuals for A4 paper:
574 .Dl $ mandoc \-T ps \-O paper=a4 mdoc.7 man.7 \*(Gt manuals.ps
580 format, for use on systems lacking an
584 .Dl $ mandoc \-T man foo.mdoc \*(Gt foo.man
586 Messages displayed by
590 .D1 Nm Ns : Ar file : Ns Ar line : Ns Ar column : level : message : macro args
592 Line and column numbers start at 1.
593 Both are omitted for messages referring to an input file as a whole.
594 Macro names and arguments are omitted where meaningless.
595 Fatal messages about invalid command line arguments
596 or operating system errors, for example when memory is exhausted,
603 Message levels have the following meanings:
604 .Bl -tag -width "warning"
606 An input file uses unsupported low-level
609 The output may be incomplete and/or misformatted,
610 so using GNU troff instead of
612 to process the file may be preferable.
614 An input file contains invalid syntax that cannot be safely interpreted.
615 By discarding part of the input or inserting missing tokens,
616 the parser is able to continue, and the error does not prevent
617 generation of formatted output, but typically, preparing that
618 output involves information loss, broken document structure
619 or unintended formatting, no matter whether
621 or GNU troff is used.
622 In many cases, the output of
624 and GNU troff is identical, but in some,
626 is more resilient than GNU troff with respect to malformed input.
628 Non-existent or unreadable input files are also reported on the
631 In that case, the parser cannot even be started and no output
632 is produced from those input files.
634 An input file uses obsolete, discouraged or non-portable syntax.
635 All the same, the meaning of the input is unambiguous and a correct
636 rendering can be produced.
637 Documents causing warnings may render poorly when using other
638 formatting tools instead of
647 levels except those about non-existent or unreadable input files
648 are hidden unless their level, or a lower level, is requested using a
653 .Ss Warnings related to the document prologue
655 .It Sy "missing manual title, using UNTITLED"
659 macro has no arguments, or there is no
661 macro before the first non-prologue macro.
662 .It Sy "missing manual title, using \(dq\(dq"
666 macro, or it has no arguments.
667 .It Sy "lower case character in document title"
669 The title is still used as given in the
674 .It Sy "missing manual section, using \(dq\(dq"
680 macro lacks the mandatory section argument.
681 .It Sy "unknown manual section"
683 The section number in a
685 line is invalid, but still used.
686 .It Sy "missing date, using today's date"
688 The document was parsed as
694 macro has no arguments or only empty arguments;
695 or the document was parsed as
701 macro has less than three arguments or its third argument is empty.
702 .It Sy "cannot parse date, using it verbatim"
708 macro does not follow the conventional format.
709 .It Sy "missing Os macro, using \(dq\(dq"
711 The default or current system is not shown in this case.
712 .It Sy "duplicate prologue macro"
714 One of the prologue macros occurs more than once.
715 The last instance overrides all previous ones.
716 .It Sy "late prologue macro"
722 macro occurs after some non-prologue macro, but still takes effect.
723 .It Sy "skipping late title macro"
727 macro appears after the first non-prologue macro.
728 Traditional formatters cannot handle this because
729 they write the page header before parsing the document body.
730 Even though this technical restriction does not apply to
732 traditional semantics is preserved.
733 The late macro is discarded including its arguments.
734 .It Sy "prologue macros out of order"
736 The prologue macros are not given in the conventional order
740 All three macros are used even when given in another order.
742 .Ss Warnings regarding document structure
744 .It Sy ".so is fragile, better use ln(1)"
746 Including files only works when the parser program runs with the correct
747 current working directory.
748 .It Sy "no document body"
750 The document body contains neither text nor macros.
751 An empty document is shown, consisting only of a header and a footer line.
752 .It Sy "content before first section header"
754 Some macros or text precede the first
759 The offending macros and text are parsed and added to the top level
760 of the syntax tree, outside any section block.
761 .It Sy "first section is not NAME"
763 The argument of the first
771 .It Sy "NAME section without name"
773 The NAME section does not contain any
776 .It Sy "NAME section without description"
778 The NAME section lacks the mandatory
781 .It Sy "description not at the end of NAME"
783 The NAME section does contain an
785 child macro, but other content follows it.
786 .It Sy "bad NAME section content"
788 The NAME section contains plain text or macros other than
792 .It Sy "missing description line, using \(dq\(dq"
796 macro lacks the required argument.
797 The title line of the manual will end after the dash.
798 .It Sy "sections out of conventional order"
800 A standard section occurs after another section it usually precedes.
801 All section titles are used as given,
802 and the order of sections is not changed.
803 .It Sy "duplicate section title"
805 The same standard section title occurs more than once.
806 .It Sy "unexpected section"
808 A standard section header occurs in a section of the manual
809 where it normally isn't useful.
810 .It Sy "unusual Xr order"
812 In the SEE ALSO section, an
814 macro with a lower section number follows one with a higher number,
817 macros referring to the same section are out of alphabetical order.
818 .It Sy "unusual Xr punctuation"
820 In the SEE ALSO section, punctuation between two
822 macros differs from a single comma, or there is trailing punctuation
826 .It Sy "AUTHORS section without An macro"
828 An AUTHORS sections contains no
830 macros, or only empty ones.
831 Probably, there are author names lacking markup.
833 .Ss "Warnings related to macros and nesting"
835 .It Sy "obsolete macro"
839 manual for replacements.
840 .It Sy "macro neither callable nor escaped"
842 The name of a macro that is not callable appears on a macro line.
843 It is printed verbatim.
844 If the intention is to call it, move it to its own input line;
845 otherwise, escape it by prepending
847 .It Sy "skipping paragraph macro"
850 documents, this happens
853 at the beginning and end of sections and subsections
855 right before non-compact lists and displays
857 at the end of items in non-column, non-compact lists
859 and for multiple consecutive paragraph macros.
863 documents, it happens
875 macros having neither head nor body arguments
886 .It Sy "moving paragraph macro out of list"
890 list contains a trailing paragraph macro.
891 The paragraph macro is moved after the end of the list.
892 .It Sy "skipping no-space macro"
894 An input line begins with an
897 The macro is ignored.
898 .It Sy "blocks badly nested"
900 If two blocks intersect, one should completely contain the other.
901 Otherwise, rendered output is likely to look strange in any output
902 format, and rendering in SGML-based output formats is likely to be
903 outright wrong because such languages do not support badly nested
905 Typical examples of badly nested blocks are
906 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bo \&Ac \&Bc
908 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bq \&Ac .
916 .It Sy "nested displays are not portable"
923 display occurs nested inside another
928 but fails with most other implementations.
929 .It Sy "moving content out of list"
933 list block contains text or macros before the first
936 The offending children are moved before the beginning of the list.
937 .It Sy ".Vt block has child macro"
941 macro supports plain text arguments only.
942 Formatting may be ugly and semantic searching
943 for the affected content might not work.
944 .It Sy "fill mode already enabled, skipping"
948 request occurs even though the document is still in fill mode,
949 or already switched back to fill mode.
951 .It Sy "fill mode already disabled, skipping"
955 request occurs even though the document already switched to no-fill mode
956 and did not switch back to fill mode yet.
958 .It Sy "line scope broken"
960 While parsing the next-line scope of the previous macro,
961 another macro is found that prematurely terminates the previous one.
962 The previous, interrupted macro is deleted from the parse tree.
964 .Ss "Warnings related to missing arguments"
966 .It Sy "skipping empty request"
968 The macro name is missing from a macro definition request,
971 control statement or operation keyword lacks its required argument.
972 .It Sy "conditional request controls empty scope"
974 A conditional request is only useful if any of the following
975 follows it on the same logical input line:
980 keyword to open a multi-line scope.
982 A request or macro or some text, resulting in a single-line scope.
984 The immediate end of the logical line without any intervening whitespace,
985 resulting in next-line scope.
987 Here, a conditional request is followed by trailing whitespace only,
988 and there is no other content on its logical input line.
989 Note that it doesn't matter whether the logical input line is split
990 across multiple physical input lines using
992 line continuation characters.
993 This is one of the rare cases
994 where trailing whitespace is syntactically significant.
995 The conditional request controls a scope containing whitespace only,
996 so it is unlikely to have a significant effect,
997 except that it may control a following
1000 .It Sy "skipping empty macro"
1002 The indicated macro has no arguments and hence no effect.
1003 .It Sy "empty block"
1014 block contains nothing in its body and will produce no output.
1015 .It Sy "empty argument, using 0n"
1017 The required width is missing after
1024 .It Sy "missing display type, using -ragged"
1028 macro is invoked without the required display type.
1029 .It Sy "list type is not the first argument"
1033 macro, at least one other argument precedes the type argument.
1036 utility copes with any argument order, but some other
1038 implementations do not.
1039 .It Sy "missing -width in -tag list, using 8n"
1048 .It Sy "missing utility name, using \(dq\(dq"
1052 macro is called without an argument before
1054 has first been called with an argument.
1055 .It Sy "missing function name, using \(dq\(dq"
1059 macro is called without an argument.
1060 No function name is printed.
1061 .It Sy "empty head in list item"
1073 macro lacks the required argument.
1074 The item head is left empty.
1075 .It Sy "empty list item"
1087 An empty list item is shown.
1088 .It Sy "missing font type, using \efR"
1092 macro has no argument.
1093 It switches to the default font.
1094 .It Sy "unknown font type, using \efR"
1098 argument is invalid.
1099 The default font is used instead.
1100 .It Sy "nothing follows prefix"
1104 macro has no argument, or only one argument and no macro follows
1105 on the same input line.
1106 This defeats its purpose; in particular, spacing is not suppressed
1107 before the text or macros following on the next input line.
1108 .It Sy "empty reference block"
1112 macro is immediately followed by an
1114 macro on the next input line.
1115 Such an empty block does not produce any output.
1116 .It Sy "missing -std argument, adding it"
1122 macro lacks the required
1129 even when it is not specified, but other implementations may not.
1130 .It Sy "missing option string, using \(dq\(dq"
1134 macro is invoked without any argument.
1135 An empty pair of square brackets is shown.
1136 .It Sy "missing resource identifier, using \(dq\(dq"
1140 macro is invoked without any argument.
1141 An empty pair of angle brackets is shown.
1142 .It Sy "missing eqn box, using \(dq\(dq"
1144 A diacritic mark or a binary operator is found,
1145 but there is nothing to the left of it.
1146 An empty box is inserted.
1148 .Ss "Warnings related to bad macro arguments"
1150 .It Sy "unterminated quoted argument"
1152 Macro arguments can be enclosed in double quote characters
1153 such that space characters and macro names contained in the quoted
1154 argument need not be escaped.
1155 The closing quote of the last argument of a macro can be omitted.
1156 However, omitting it is not recommended because it makes the code
1158 .It Sy "duplicate argument"
1164 macro has more than one
1171 All but the last instances of these arguments are ignored.
1172 .It Sy "skipping duplicate argument"
1176 macro has more than one
1181 All but the first of these arguments are ignored.
1182 .It Sy "skipping duplicate display type"
1186 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1187 .It Sy "skipping duplicate list type"
1191 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1192 .It Sy "skipping -width argument"
1206 .It Sy "wrong number of cells"
1209 list, the number of tabs or
1211 macros is less than the number expected from the list header line
1212 or exceeds the expected number by more than one.
1213 Missing cells remain empty, and all cells exceeding the number of
1214 columns are joined into one single cell.
1215 .It Sy "unknown AT&T UNIX version"
1219 macro has an invalid argument.
1220 It is used verbatim, with
1223 .It Sy "comma in function argument"
1229 macro contains a comma; it should probably be split into two arguments.
1230 .It Sy "parenthesis in function name"
1232 The first argument of an
1236 macro contains an opening or closing parenthesis; that's probably wrong,
1237 parentheses are added automatically.
1238 .It Sy "invalid content in Rs block"
1242 block contains plain text or non-% macros.
1243 The bogus content is left in the syntax tree.
1244 Formatting may be poor.
1245 .It Sy "invalid Boolean argument"
1249 macro has an argument other than
1253 The invalid argument is moved out of the macro, which leaves the macro
1254 empty, causing it to toggle the spacing mode.
1255 .It Sy "unknown font, skipping request"
1263 layout modifier has an unknown
1266 .It Sy "odd number of characters in request"
1270 request contains an odd number of characters.
1271 The last character is mapped to the blank character.
1273 .Ss "Warnings related to plain text"
1275 .It Sy "blank line in fill mode, using .sp"
1277 The meaning of blank input lines is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1278 In fill mode, line breaks of text input lines are not supposed to be
1280 However, for compatibility with groff, blank lines in fill mode
1284 .It Sy "tab in filled text"
1286 The meaning of tab characters is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1287 In fill mode, whitespace is not supposed to be significant
1288 on text input lines.
1289 As an implementation dependent choice, tab characters on text lines
1290 are passed through to the formatters in any case.
1291 Given that the text before the tab character will be filled,
1292 it is hard to predict which tab stop position the tab will advance to.
1293 .It Sy "whitespace at end of input line"
1294 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1295 Whitespace at the end of input lines is almost never semantically
1296 significant \(em but in the odd case where it might be, it is
1297 extremely confusing when reviewing and maintaining documents.
1298 .It Sy "bad comment style"
1300 Comment lines start with a dot, a backslash, and a double-quote character.
1303 utility treats the line as a comment line even without the backslash,
1304 but leaving out the backslash might not be portable.
1305 .It Sy "invalid escape sequence"
1307 An escape sequence has an invalid opening argument delimiter, lacks the
1308 closing argument delimiter, or the argument has too few characters.
1309 If the argument is incomplete,
1313 expand to an empty string,
1319 to the length of the incomplete argument.
1320 All other invalid escape sequences are ignored.
1321 .It Sy "undefined string, using \(dq\(dq"
1323 If a string is used without being defined before,
1324 its value is implicitly set to the empty string.
1325 However, defining strings explicitly before use
1326 keeps the code more readable.
1328 .Ss "Warnings related to tables"
1330 .It Sy "tbl line starts with span"
1332 The first cell in a table layout line is a horizontal span
1334 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1335 .It Sy "tbl column starts with span"
1337 The first line of a table layout specification
1338 requests a vertical span
1340 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1341 .It Sy "skipping vertical bar in tbl layout"
1343 A table layout specification contains more than two consecutive vertical bars.
1344 A double bar is printed, all additional bars are discarded.
1346 .Ss "Errors related to tables"
1348 .It Sy "non-alphabetic character in tbl options"
1350 The table options line contains a character other than a letter,
1351 blank, or comma where the beginning of an option name is expected.
1352 The character is ignored.
1353 .It Sy "skipping unknown tbl option"
1355 The table options line contains a string of letters that does not
1356 match any known option name.
1357 The word is ignored.
1358 .It Sy "missing tbl option argument"
1360 A table option that requires an argument is not followed by an
1361 opening parenthesis, or the opening parenthesis is immediately
1362 followed by a closing parenthesis.
1363 The option is ignored.
1364 .It Sy "wrong tbl option argument size"
1366 A table option argument contains an invalid number of characters.
1367 Both the option and the argument are ignored.
1368 .It Sy "empty tbl layout"
1370 A table layout specification is completely empty,
1371 specifying zero lines and zero columns.
1372 As a fallback, a single left-justified column is used.
1373 .It Sy "invalid character in tbl layout"
1375 A table layout specification contains a character that can neither
1376 be interpreted as a layout key character nor as a layout modifier,
1377 or a modifier precedes the first key.
1378 The invalid character is discarded.
1379 .It Sy "unmatched parenthesis in tbl layout"
1381 A table layout specification contains an opening parenthesis,
1382 but no matching closing parenthesis.
1383 The rest of the input line, starting from the parenthesis, has no effect.
1384 .It Sy "tbl without any data cells"
1386 A table does not contain any data cells.
1387 It will probably produce no output.
1388 .It Sy "ignoring data in spanned tbl cell"
1390 A table cell is marked as a horizontal span
1394 in the table layout, but it contains data.
1395 The data is ignored.
1396 .It Sy "ignoring extra tbl data cells"
1398 A data line contains more cells than the corresponding layout line.
1399 The data in the extra cells is ignored.
1400 .It Sy "data block open at end of tbl"
1402 A data block is opened with
1404 but never closed with a matching
1406 The remaining data lines of the table are all put into one cell,
1407 and any remaining cells stay empty.
1409 .Ss "Errors related to roff, mdoc, and man code"
1411 .It Sy "input stack limit exceeded, infinite loop?"
1413 Explicit recursion limits are implemented for the following features,
1414 in order to prevent infinite loops:
1417 expansion of nested escape sequences
1418 including expansion of strings and number registers,
1420 expansion of nested user-defined macros,
1426 When a limit is hit, the output is incorrect, typically losing
1427 some content, but the parser can continue.
1428 .It Sy "skipping bad character"
1429 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1430 The input file contains a byte that is not a printable
1433 The message mentions the character number.
1434 The offending byte is replaced with a question mark
1436 Consider editing the input file to replace the byte with an ASCII
1437 transliteration of the intended character.
1438 .It Sy "skipping unknown macro"
1439 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1440 The first identifier on a request or macro line is neither recognized as a
1442 request, nor as a user-defined macro, nor, respectively, as an
1447 It may be mistyped or unsupported.
1448 The request or macro is discarded including its arguments.
1449 .It Sy "skipping insecure request"
1451 An input file attempted to run a shell command
1452 or to read or write an external file.
1453 Such attempts are denied for security reasons.
1454 .It Sy "skipping item outside list"
1458 macro occurs outside any
1463 delimiter occurs outside any pile.
1464 It is discarded including its arguments.
1465 .It Sy "skipping column outside column list"
1469 macro occurs outside any
1472 It is discarded including its arguments.
1473 .It Sy "skipping end of block that is not open"
1474 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1475 Various syntax elements can only be used to explicitly close blocks
1476 that have previously been opened.
1479 block closing macro, a
1486 right delimiter or closing brace, or the end of an equation, table, or
1488 conditional request is encountered but no matching block is open.
1489 The offending request or macro is discarded.
1490 .It Sy "fewer RS blocks open, skipping"
1494 macro is invoked with an argument, but less than the specified number of
1500 .It Sy "inserting missing end of block"
1504 macros as well as tables require explicit closing by dedicated macros.
1505 A block that doesn't support bad nesting
1506 ends before all of its children are properly closed.
1507 The open child nodes are closed implicitly.
1508 .It Sy "appending missing end of block"
1509 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1510 At the end of the document, an explicit
1518 block, an equation, table, or
1520 conditional or ignore block is still open.
1521 The open block is closed implicitly.
1522 .It Sy "escaped character not allowed in a name"
1524 Macro, string and register identifiers consist of printable,
1525 non-whitespace ASCII characters.
1526 Escape sequences and characters and strings expressed in terms of them
1527 cannot form part of a name.
1528 The first argument of an
1536 request, or any argument of an
1538 request, or the name of a request or user defined macro being called,
1539 is terminated by an escape sequence.
1545 the request has no effect at all.
1552 what was parsed up to this point is used as the arguments to the request,
1553 and the rest of the input line is discarded including the escape sequence.
1554 When parsing for a request or a user-defined macro name to be called,
1555 only the escape sequence is discarded.
1556 The characters preceding it are used as the request or macro name,
1557 the characters following it are used as the arguments to the request or macro.
1558 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: Bd -file"
1560 For security reasons, the
1562 macro does not support the
1565 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1566 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1567 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1568 The argument is ignored including the file name following it.
1569 .It Sy "missing list type, using -item"
1573 macro fails to specify the list type.
1574 .It Sy "missing manual name, using \(dq\(dq"
1578 lacks the required argument.
1579 .It Sy "uname(3) system call failed, using UNKNOWN"
1583 macro is called without arguments, and the
1588 can be compiled with
1590 .Fl D Cm OSNAME=\(dq\e\(dq Ar string Cm \e\(dq\(dq .
1592 .It Sy "unknown standard specifier"
1596 macro has an unknown argument and is discarded.
1597 .It Sy "skipping request without numeric argument"
1606 statement has a non-numeric or negative argument or no argument at all.
1607 The invalid request or statement is ignored.
1608 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: .so with absolute path or \(dq..\(dq"
1610 For security reasons,
1614 file inclusion requests only with relative paths
1615 and only without ascending to any parent directory.
1616 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1617 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1618 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1620 only shows the path as it appears behind
1622 .It Sy ".so request failed"
1626 request requires reading an external file, but the file could not be
1629 only shows the path as it appears behind
1631 .It Sy "skipping all arguments"
1632 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , roff
1648 macro in a list that don't support item heads, a
1667 block closing request is invoked with at least one argument.
1668 All arguments are ignored.
1669 .It Sy "skipping excess arguments"
1670 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1671 A macro or request is invoked with too many arguments:
1672 .Bl -dash -offset 2n -width 2n -compact
1681 with more than one argument
1684 with another argument after
1690 with more than one argument or with a non-integer argument
1695 family with more than two arguments
1698 with more than three arguments
1701 with more than five arguments
1707 with invalid arguments
1709 The excess arguments are ignored.
1711 .Ss Unsupported features
1713 .It Sy "input too large"
1717 cannot handle input files larger than its arbitrary size limit
1718 of 2^31 bytes (2 Gigabytes).
1719 Since useful manuals are always small, this is not a problem in practice.
1720 Parsing is aborted as soon as the condition is detected.
1721 .It Sy "unsupported control character"
1723 An ASCII control character supported by other
1725 implementations but not by
1727 was found in an input file.
1728 It is replaced by a question mark.
1729 .It Sy "unsupported roff request"
1731 An input file contains a
1733 request supported by GNU troff or Heirloom troff but not by
1735 and it is likely that this will cause information loss
1736 or considerable misformatting.
1737 .It Sy "eqn delim option in tbl"
1739 The options line of a table defines equation delimiters.
1740 Any equation source code contained in the table will be printed unformatted.
1741 .It Sy "unsupported table layout modifier"
1743 A table layout specification contains an
1746 The modifier is discarded.
1747 .It Sy "ignoring macro in table"
1748 .Pq tbl , mdoc , man
1749 A table contains an invocation of an
1753 macro or of an undefined macro.
1754 The macro is ignored, and its arguments are handled
1755 as if they were a text line.
1770 utility was written by
1771 .An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv
1772 and is maintained by
1773 .An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org .
1777 the maximum size of an element attribute is determined by
1779 which is usually 1024 bytes.
1780 Be aware of this when setting long link
1782 .Fl O Cm style Ns = Ns Ar really/long/link .
git.ckatri.com / mandoc.git / blob