NEWS

   1 $Id: NEWS,v 1.3 2013/10/13 16:06:50 schwarze Exp $
   2
   3 This file lists the most important changes in the mdocml.bsd.lv distribution.
   4
   5 Changes in version 1.12.2, released on Oktober 5, 2013
   6
   7  * The mdoc(7) to man(7) converter, to be called as mandoc -Tman,
   8    is now fully functional.
   9  * The mandoc(1) utility now supports the -Ios (default operating system)
  10    input option, and the -Tutf8 output mode now actually works.
  11  * The mandocdb(8) utility no longer truncates existing databases when
  12    starting to build new ones, but only replaces them when the build
  13    actually succeeds.
  14  * The man(7) parser now supports the PD macro (paragraph distance),
  15    and (for GNU man-ext compatibility only) EX (example block) and EE
  16    (example end).  Plus several bugfixes regarding indentation, line
  17    breaks, and vertical spacing, and regarding RS following TP.
  18  * The roff(7) parser now supports the \f(BI (bold+italic) font escape,
  19    the \z (zero cursor advance) escape and the cc (change control
  20    character) and it (input line trap) requests. Plus bugfixes regarding
  21    the \t (tab) escape, nested escape sequences, and conditional requests.
  22  * In mdoc(7), several bugs were fixed related to UTF-8 output of quoting
  23    enclosures, delimiter handling, list indentation and horizontal and
  24    vertical spacing, formatting of the Lk, %U, and %C macros, plus some
  25    bugfixes related to the handling of syntax errors like badly nested
  26    font blocks, stray Ta macros outside column lists, unterminated It Xo
  27    blocks, and non-text children of Nm blocks.
  28  * In tbl(7), the width of horizontal spans and the vertical spacing
  29    around tables was corrected, and in man(7) files, a crash was fixed
  30    that was triggered by some particular unclosed T{ macros.
  31  * For mandoc developers, we now provide a tbl(3) library manual and
  32    gmdiff, a very small, very simplistic groff-versus-mandoc output
  33    comparison tool.
  34  * Provide this NEWS file.
  35
  36 Changes in version 1.12.1, released on March 23, 2012
  37
  38  * Significant work on apropos(1) and mandocdb(8). These tools are now
  39    much more robust.  A whatis(1) implementation is now handled as an
  40    apropos(1) mode.  These tools are also able to minimally handle
  41    pre-formatted pages, that is, those already formatted by another
  42    utility such as GNU troff.
  43  * The man.cgi(7) script is also now available for wider testing.
  44    It interfaces with mandocdb(8) manuals cached by catman(8).
  45    HTML output is generated on-the-fly by libmandoc or internal
  46    methods to convert pre-formatted pages.
  47  * The mailing list archive for the discuss and tech lists are being
  48    hosted by Gmane at gmane.comp.tools.mdocml.user and
  49    gmane.comp.tools.mdocml.devel, respectively.
  50
  51 Changes in version 1.12.0, released on October 8, 2011
  52
  53  * This version features a new, work-in-progress mandoc(1) output mode:
  54    -Tman.  This mode allows a system maintainer to distribute man(7)
  55    media for older systems that may not natively support mdoc(7), such
  56    as old Solaris systems.
  57  * The -Ofragment option was added to mandoc(1)'s -Thtml and -Txhtml modes.
  58  * While adding features, an apropos(1) utility has been merged from the
  59    mandoc-tools sandbox.  This interfaces with mandocdb(8) for semantic
  60    search of manual content.  apropos(1) is different from the traditional
  61    apropos primarily in allowing keyword search (such as for functions,
  62    utilities, etc.) and regular expressions.  Note that the calling
  63    syntax for apropos is likely to change as it settles down.
  64  * In documentation news, the mdoc(7) and man(7) manuals have been
  65    made considerably more readable by adding MACRO OVERVIEW sections, by
  66    moving the gory details of the LANGUAGE SYNTAX to the roff(7) manual,
  67    and by moving the very technical MACRO SYNTAX sections down to the
  68    bottom of the page.
  69  * Furthermore, for tbl(7), the -Tascii mode horizontal spacing of tables
  70    was rewritten completely.  It is now compatible with groff(1), both
  71    with and without frames and rulers.
  72  * Nesting of indented blocks is now supported in man(7), and several
  73    bugs were fixed regarding indentation and alignment.
  74  * The page headers in mdoc(7) are now nicer for very long titles.
  75
  76 Changes in version 1.11.7, released on September 2, 2011
  77
  78  * Added demandoc(1) utility for stripping away macros and escapes.
  79    This replaces the historical deroff(1) utility.
  80  * Also improved the mdoc(7) and man(7) manuals.
  81
  82 Changes in version 1.11.6, released on August 16, 2011
  83
  84  * Handling of tr macro in roff(7) implemented.  This makes Perl
  85    documentation much more readable.  Hyphenation is also now enabled in
  86    man(7) format documents.  Many other general improvements have been
  87    implemented.
  88
  89 Changes in version 1.11.5, released on July 24, 2011
  90
  91  * Significant eqn(7) improvements.  mdocml can now parse arbitrary eqn
  92    input (although few GNU extensions are accepted, nor is mixing
  93    low-level roff with eqn).  See the eqn(7) manual for details.
  94    For the time being, equations are rendered as simple in-line text.
  95    The equation parser satisfies the language specified in the
  96    Second Edition User's Guide:
  97    http://www.kohala.com/start/troff/v7man/eqn/eqn2e.ps
  98
  99 Changes in version 1.11.4, released on July 12, 2011
 100
 101  * Bug-fixes and clean-ups across all systems, especially in mandocdb(8)
 102    and the man(7) parser.  This release was significantly assisted by
 103    participants in OpenBSD's c2k11.  Thanks!
 104
 105 Changes in version 1.11.3, released on May 26, 2011
 106
 107  * Introduce locale-encoding of output with the -Tlocale output option and
 108    Unicode escaped-character input.  See mandoc(1) and mandoc_char(7),
 109    respectively, for details.  This allows for non-ASCII characters (e.g.,
 110    \[u5000]) to be rendered in the locale's encoding, if said environment
 111    supports wide-character encoding (if it does not, -Tascii is used
 112    instead).  Locale support can be turned off at compile time by removing
 113    -DUSE_WCHAR in the Makefile, in which case -Tlocale is always a synonym
 114    for -Tascii.
 115  * Furthermore, multibyte-encoded documents, such as those in UTF-8, may
 116    be on-the-fly recoded into mandoc(1) input by using the newly-added
 117    preconv(1) utility.  Note: in the future, this feature may be
 118    integrated into mandoc(1).
 119
 120 Changes in version 1.11.2, released on May 12, 2011
 121
 122  * Corrected some installation issues in version 1.11.1.
 123  * Further migration to libmandoc.
 124  * Initial public release (this utility is very much under development)
 125    of mandocdb(8).  This utility produces keyword databases of manual
 126    content, which features semantic querying of manual content.
 127
 128 Changes in version 1.11.1, released on April 4, 2011
 129
 130  * The earlier libroff, libmdoc, and libman soup have been merged into
 131    a single library, libmandoc, which manages all aspects of parsing
 132    real manuals, from line-handling to tbl(7) parsing.
 133  * As usual, many general fixes and improvements have also occurred.
 134    In particular, a great deal of redundancy and superfluous code has
 135    been removed with the merging of the backend libraries.
 136  * see also the changes in 1.10.10
 137
 138 Changes in version 1.10.10, March 20, 2011, NOT released
 139
 140  * Initial eqn(7) functionality is in place.  For the time being,
 141    this is limited to the recognition of equation blocks;
 142    future version of mdocml will expand upon this framework.
 143
 144 Changes in version 1.10.9, released on January 7, 2011
 145
 146  * Many back-end fixes have been implemented: argument handling (quoting),
 147    man(7) improvements, error/warning classes, and many more.
 148  * Initial tbl(7) functionality (see the "TS", "TE", and "T&" macros in
 149    the roff(7) manual) has been merged from tbl.bsd.lv.  Output is still
 150    minimal, especially for -Thtml and -Txhtml, but manages to at least
 151    display data.  This means that mandoc(1) now has built-in support
 152    for two troff preprocessors via libroff: soelim(1) and tbl(1).
 153
 154 Changes in version 1.10.8, released on December 24, 2010
 155
 156  * Overhauled the -Thtml and -Txhtml output modes.  They now display
 157    readable output in arbitrary browsers, including text-based ones like
 158    lynx(1).  See HTML and XHTML manuals in the DOCUMENTATION section
 159    for examples.  Attention: available style-sheet classes have been
 160    considerably changed!  See the example.style.css file for details.
 161    Lastly, libmdoc and libman have been cleaned up and reduced in size
 162    and complexity.
 163  * see also the changes in 1.10.7
 164
 165 Changes in version 1.10.7, December 6, 2010, NOT released
 166
 167  Significant improvements merged from OpenBSD downstream, including:
 168  * many new roff(7) components,
 169  * in-line implementation of troff's soelim(1),
 170  * broken-block handling,
 171  * overhauled error classifications, and
 172  * cleaned up handling of error conditions.
 173
 174 Changes in version 1.10.6, released on September 27, 2010
 175
 176  * Calling conventions for mandoc(1) have changed: -W improved and -f
 177    deprecated.
 178  * Non-ASCII characters are also now uniformly discarded.
 179  * Lots of documentation improvements.
 180  * Many incremental fixes accomodating for groff's more interesting
 181    productions.
 182  * Lastly, pod2man(1) preambles are now fully accepted after some
 183    considerable roff(7) and special character support.
 184
 185 Changes in version 1.10.5, released on July 27, 2010
 186
 187  * Primarily a bug-fix and polish release, but including -Tpdf support
 188    in mandoc(1) by way of "Summer of Code".  Highlights:
 189  * fix "Sm" and "Bd" handling
 190  * fix end-of-sentence handling for embedded sentences
 191  * polish man(7) documentation
 192  * document all mdoc(7) macros
 193  * polish mandoc(1) -Tps output
 194  * lots of internal clean-ups in character escapes
 195  * un-break literal contexts in man(7) documents
 196  * improve -Thtml output for -man
 197  * add mandoc(1) -Tpdf support
 198
 199 Changes in version 1.10.4, released on July 12, 2010
 200
 201  * Lots of features developed during both "Summer of Code" and the
 202    OpenBSD c2k10 hackathon:
 203  * minimal "ds" roff(7) symbols are supported
 204  * beautified SYNOPSIS section output
 205  * acceptance of scope-block breakage in mdoc(7)
 206  * clarify error message status
 207  * many minor bug-fixes and formatting issues resolved
 208  * see also changes in 1.10.3
 209
 210 Changes in version 1.10.3, June 29, 2010, NOT released
 211
 212  * variable font-width and paper-size support in mandoc(1) -Tps output
 213  * "Bk" mdoc(7) support
 214
 215 Changes in version 1.10.2, released on June 19, 2010
 216
 217  * Small release featuring text-decoration in -Tps output,
 218    a few minor relaxations of errors, and some optimisations.
 219
 220 Changes in version 1.10.1, released on June 7, 2010
 221
 222  * This primarily focusses on the "Bl" and "It" macros described in
 223    mdoc(7).  Multi-line column support is now fully compatible with groff,
 224    as are implicit list entries for columns.
 225  * Removed manuals(7) in favour of http://manpages.bsd.lv.
 226  * The way we handle the SYNOPSIS section (see the SYNOPSIS documentation
 227    in MANUAL STRUCTURE) has also been considerably simplified compared
 228    to groff's method.
 229  * Furthermore, the -Owidth=width output option has been added to -Tascii,
 230    see mandoc(1).
 231  * Lastly, initial PostScript output has been added with the -Tps option
 232    to mandoc(1).  It's brutally simple at the moment: fixed-font, with no
 233    font decorations.
 234
 235 Changes in version 1.10.0, released on May 29, 2010
 236
 237  * Release consisting of the results from the m2k10 hackathon and up-merge
 238    from OpenBSD.  This requires a significant note of thanks to Ingo
 239    Schwarze (OpenBSD) and Joerg Sonnenberger (NetBSD) for their hard work,
 240    and again to Joerg for hosting m2k10.  Highlights (mostly cribbed from
 241    Ingo's m2k10 report) follow in no particular order:
 242  * a libroff preprocessor in front of libmdoc and libman stripping out
 243    roff(7) instructions;
 244  * end-of-sentence (EOS) detection in free-form and macro lines;
 245  * correct handling of tab-separated columnar lists in mdoc(7);
 246  * improved main calling routines to optionally use mmap(3) for better
 247    performance;
 248  * cleaned up exiting when invoked as -Tlint or over multiple files
 249    with -fign-errors;
 250  * error and warning message handling re-written to be unified for
 251    libroff, libmdoc, and libman;
 252  * handling of badly-nested explicit-scoped macros;
 253  * improved free-form text parsing in libman and libmdoc;
 254  * significant GNU troff compatibility improvements in -Tascii,
 255    largely in terms of spacing;
 256  * a regression framework for making sure the many fragilities of GNU
 257    troff aren't trampled in subsequent work;
 258  * support for -Tascii breaking at hyphens encountered in free-form text;
 259  * and many more minor fixes and improvements
 260
 261 Changes in version 1.9.25, released on May 13, 2010
 262
 263  * Fixed handling of "\*(Ba" escape.
 264  * Backed out -fno-ign-chars (pointless complexity).
 265  * Fixed erroneous breaking of literal lines.
 266  * Fixed SYNOPSIS breaking lines before non-initial macros.
 267  * Changed default section ordering.
 268  * Most importantly, the framework for end-of-sentence double-spacing is
 269    in place, now implemented for the "end-of-sentence, end-of-line" rule.
 270  * This is a stable roll-back point before the mandoc hackathon in Rostock!
 271
 272 Changes in version 1.9.24, released on May 9, 2010
 273
 274  * Rolled back break-at-hyphen.
 275  * -DUGLY is now the default (no feature splits!).
 276  * Free-form text is not de-chunked any more: lines are passed
 277    whole-sale into the front-end, including whitespace.
 278  * Added mailing lists.
 279
 280 Changes in version 1.9.23, released on April 7, 2010
 281
 282  * mdocml has been linked to the OpenBSD build.
 283  * This version incorporates many small changes, mostly from patches
 284    by OpenBSD, allowing crufty manuals to slip by with warnings instead
 285    of erroring-out.
 286  * Some subtle semantic issues, such as punctuation scope, have also
 287    been fixed.
 288  * Lastly, some issues with -Thtml have been fixed, which prompted an
 289    update to the online manual pages style layout.
 290
 291 Changes in version 1.9.22, released on March 31, 2010
 292
 293  * Adjusted merge of the significant work by Ingo Schwarze
 294    in getting "Xo" blocks (block full implicit, e.g., "It"
 295    for non-columnar lists) to work properly.  This isn't
 296    enabled by default: you must specify -DUGLY as a compiler
 297    flag (see the Makefile for details).
 298
 299 Changes in version 1.9.20, released on March 30, 2010
 300
 301  * More efforts to get roff instructions in man(7) documents under
 302    control.  Note that roff instructions embedded in line-scoped,
 303    next-line macros (e.g. "B") are not supported.
 304  * Leading punctuation for mdoc(7) macros, such as "Fl ( ( a",
 305    are now correctly handled.
 306
 307 Changes in version 1.9.18, released on March 27, 2010
 308
 309  * Many fixes (largely pertaining to scope)
 310    and improvements (e.g., handling of apostrophe-control macros,
 311    which fixes the strange "BR" seen in some macro output)
 312    to handling roff instructions in man(7) documents.
 313
 314 Changes in version 1.9.17, released on March 25, 2010
 315
 316  * Accept perlpod(1) standard preamble.
 317  * Also accept (and discard) "de", "dei", "am", "ami", and "ig"
 318    roff macro blocks.
 319
 320 Changes in version 1.9.16, released on March 22, 2010
 321
 322  * Inspired by patches and bug reports by Ingo Schwarze,
 323    allowed man(7) to accept non-printing elements to be nested
 324    within next-line scopes, such as "br" within "B" or "TH",
 325    which is valid roff.
 326  * Longsoon architecture also noted and Makefile cleaned up.
 327
 328 Changes in version 1.9.15, released on February 18, 2010
 329
 330  * Moved to our new BSD.lv home.
 331  * XHTML is now an acceptable output mode for mandoc(1);
 332  * "Xr" made more compatible with groff;
 333  * "Vt" fixed when invoked in SYNOPSIS;
 334  * "\\" escape removed;
 335  * end-of-line white-space detected for all lines;
 336  * subtle bug fixed in list display for some modes;
 337  * compatibility layer checked in for compilation in diverse
 338    UNIX systems;
 339  * and column lengths handled correctly.
 340
 341 For older releases, see the ChangeLog files
 342 in http://mdocml.bsd.lv/snapshots/ .