1 .\" $Id: mandoc.1,v 1.168 2017/01/08 00:11:23 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: January 8 2017 $
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
79 Display only the SYNOPSIS lines.
82 .It Fl I Cm os Ns = Ns Ar name
83 Override the default operating system
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 .Sx Syntax tree output .
290 Encode output in the UTF\-8 multi-byte format.
294 This is a synonym for
298 If multiple input files are specified, these will be processed by the
299 corresponding filter in-order.
303 is rendered in standard 7-bit ASCII documented in
306 Font styles are applied by using back-spaced encoding such that an
310 .Sq _ Ns \e[bs] Ns c ,
313 is the back-space character number 8.
314 Emboldened characters are rendered as
315 .Sq c Ns \e[bs] Ns c .
317 The special characters documented in
319 are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent.
321 Output width is limited to 78 visible columns unless literal input lines
326 arguments are accepted:
328 .It Cm indent Ns = Ns Ar indent
329 The left margin for normal text is set to
331 blank characters instead of the default of five for
335 Increasing this is not recommended; it may result in degraded formatting,
336 for example overfull lines or ugly line breaks.
337 .It Cm width Ns = Ns Ar width
338 The output width is set to
340 which will normalise to \(>=58.
345 conforms to HTML5 using optional self-closing tags.
346 Default styles use only CSS1.
347 Equations rendered from
353 file documents style-sheet classes available for customising output.
354 If a style-sheet is not specified with
357 defaults to simple output (via an embedded style-sheet)
358 readable in any graphical or text-based web
361 Special characters are rendered in decimal-encoded UTF\-8.
365 arguments are accepted:
368 Omit the <!DOCTYPE> declaration and the <html>, <head>, and <body>
369 elements and only emit the subtree below the <body> element.
372 argument will be ignored.
373 This is useful when embedding manual content within existing documents.
374 .It Cm includes Ns = Ns Ar fmt
379 is used as a template for linked header files (usually via the
384 are replaced with the include filename.
385 The default is not to present a
387 .It Cm man Ns = Ns Ar fmt
391 .Ar ../html%S/%N.%S.html ,
392 is used as a template for linked manuals (usually via the
399 are replaced with the linked manual's name and section, respectively.
400 If no section is included, section 1 is assumed.
401 The default is not to
403 .It Cm style Ns = Ns Ar style.css
406 is used for an external style-sheet.
407 This must be a valid absolute or
411 Locale-depending output encoding is triggered with
415 This option is not available on all systems: systems without locale
416 support, or those whose internal representation is not natively UCS-4,
421 for font style specification and available command-line arguments.
423 Translate input format into
426 This is useful for distributing manual sources to legacy systems
433 is passed as input, it is translated into
435 If the input format is
437 the input is copied to the output, expanding any
441 The parser is also run, and as usual, the
445 are displayed before copying the input to the output.
447 PDF-1.1 output may be generated by
450 .Sx PostScript Output
453 arguments and defaults.
454 .Ss PostScript Output
457 Level-2 pages may be generated by
459 Output pages default to letter sized and are rendered in the Times font
461 Margins are calculated as 1/9 the page length and width.
464 Special characters are rendered as in
469 arguments are accepted:
471 .It Cm paper Ns = Ns Ar name
481 You may also manually specify dimensions as
483 width by height in millimetres.
484 If an unknown value is encountered,
491 to force a UTF\-8 locale.
494 for details and options.
495 .Ss Syntax tree output
498 to show a human readable representation of the syntax tree.
499 It is useful for debugging the source code of manual pages.
500 The exact format is subject to change, so don't write parsers for it.
501 Each output line shows one syntax tree node.
502 Child nodes are indented with respect to their parent node.
507 For macro nodes, the macro name; for text and
510 There is a special format for
514 Node type (text, elem, block, head, body, body-end, tail, tbl, eqn).
519 An opening parenthesis if the node is an opening delimiter.
521 An asterisk if the node starts a new input line.
523 The input line number (starting at one).
527 The input column number (starting at one).
529 A closing parenthesis if the node is a closing delimiter.
531 A full stop if the node ends a sentence.
535 .Bl -tag -width MANPAGER
537 Any non-empty value of the environment variable
539 will be used instead of the standard pagination program,
542 Specifies the pagination program to use when
545 If neither PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined,
553 utility exits with one of the following values, controlled by the message
559 .Bl -tag -width Ds -compact
561 No warnings or errors occurred, or those that did were ignored because
562 they were lower than the requested
565 At least one warning occurred, but no error, and
569 At least one parsing error occurred,
570 but no unsupported feature was encountered, and
576 At least one unsupported feature was encountered, and
583 Invalid command line arguments were specified.
584 No input files have been read.
586 An operating system error occurred, for example exhaustion
587 of memory, file descriptors, or process table entries.
590 to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file.
598 To page manuals to the terminal:
600 .Dl $ mandoc \-W all,stop mandoc.1 2\*(Gt&1 | less
601 .Dl $ mandoc mandoc.1 mdoc.3 mdoc.7 | less
603 To produce HTML manuals with
607 .Dl $ mandoc \-T html -O style=mandoc.css mdoc.7 \*(Gt mdoc.7.html
609 To check over a large set of manuals:
611 .Dl $ mandoc \-T lint \(gafind /usr/src -name \e*\e.[1-9]\(ga
613 To produce a series of PostScript manuals for A4 paper:
615 .Dl $ mandoc \-T ps \-O paper=a4 mdoc.7 man.7 \*(Gt manuals.ps
621 format, for use on systems lacking an
625 .Dl $ mandoc \-T man foo.mdoc \*(Gt foo.man
627 Messages displayed by
631 .D1 Nm Ns : Ar file : Ns Ar line : Ns Ar column : level : message : macro args
633 Line and column numbers start at 1.
634 Both are omitted for messages referring to an input file as a whole.
635 Macro names and arguments are omitted where meaningless.
636 Fatal messages about invalid command line arguments
637 or operating system errors, for example when memory is exhausted,
644 Message levels have the following meanings:
645 .Bl -tag -width "warning"
647 An input file uses unsupported low-level
650 The output may be incomplete and/or misformatted,
651 so using GNU troff instead of
653 to process the file may be preferable.
655 An input file contains invalid syntax that cannot be safely interpreted.
656 By discarding part of the input or inserting missing tokens,
657 the parser is able to continue, and the error does not prevent
658 generation of formatted output, but typically, preparing that
659 output involves information loss, broken document structure
660 or unintended formatting, no matter whether
662 or GNU troff is used.
663 In many cases, the output of
665 and GNU troff is identical, but in some,
667 is more resilient than GNU troff with respect to malformed input.
669 Non-existent or unreadable input files are also reported on the
672 In that case, the parser cannot even be started and no output
673 is produced from those input files.
675 An input file uses obsolete, discouraged or non-portable syntax.
676 All the same, the meaning of the input is unambiguous and a correct
677 rendering can be produced.
678 Documents causing warnings may render poorly when using other
679 formatting tools instead of
688 levels except those about non-existent or unreadable input files
689 are hidden unless their level, or a lower level, is requested using a
694 .Ss Warnings related to the document prologue
696 .It Sy "missing manual title, using UNTITLED"
700 macro has no arguments, or there is no
702 macro before the first non-prologue macro.
703 .It Sy "missing manual title, using \(dq\(dq"
707 macro, or it has no arguments.
708 .It Sy "lower case character in document title"
710 The title is still used as given in the
715 .It Sy "missing manual section, using \(dq\(dq"
721 macro lacks the mandatory section argument.
722 .It Sy "unknown manual section"
724 The section number in a
726 line is invalid, but still used.
727 .It Sy "missing date, using today's date"
729 The document was parsed as
735 macro has no arguments or only empty arguments;
736 or the document was parsed as
742 macro has less than three arguments or its third argument is empty.
743 .It Sy "cannot parse date, using it verbatim"
749 macro does not follow the conventional format.
750 .It Sy "missing Os macro, using \(dq\(dq"
752 The default or current system is not shown in this case.
753 .It Sy "duplicate prologue macro"
755 One of the prologue macros occurs more than once.
756 The last instance overrides all previous ones.
757 .It Sy "late prologue macro"
763 macro occurs after some non-prologue macro, but still takes effect.
764 .It Sy "skipping late title macro"
768 macro appears after the first non-prologue macro.
769 Traditional formatters cannot handle this because
770 they write the page header before parsing the document body.
771 Even though this technical restriction does not apply to
773 traditional semantics is preserved.
774 The late macro is discarded including its arguments.
775 .It Sy "prologue macros out of order"
777 The prologue macros are not given in the conventional order
781 All three macros are used even when given in another order.
783 .Ss Warnings regarding document structure
785 .It Sy ".so is fragile, better use ln(1)"
787 Including files only works when the parser program runs with the correct
788 current working directory.
789 .It Sy "no document body"
791 The document body contains neither text nor macros.
792 An empty document is shown, consisting only of a header and a footer line.
793 .It Sy "content before first section header"
795 Some macros or text precede the first
800 The offending macros and text are parsed and added to the top level
801 of the syntax tree, outside any section block.
802 .It Sy "first section is not NAME"
804 The argument of the first
812 .It Sy "NAME section without Nm before Nd"
814 The NAME section does not contain any
816 child macro before the first
819 .It Sy "NAME section without description"
821 The NAME section lacks the mandatory
824 .It Sy "description not at the end of NAME"
826 The NAME section does contain an
828 child macro, but other content follows it.
829 .It Sy "bad NAME section content"
831 The NAME section contains plain text or macros other than
835 .It Sy "missing comma before name"
837 The NAME section contains an
839 macro that is neither the first one nor preceded by a comma.
840 .It Sy "missing description line, using \(dq\(dq"
844 macro lacks the required argument.
845 The title line of the manual will end after the dash.
846 .It Sy "sections out of conventional order"
848 A standard section occurs after another section it usually precedes.
849 All section titles are used as given,
850 and the order of sections is not changed.
851 .It Sy "duplicate section title"
853 The same standard section title occurs more than once.
854 .It Sy "unexpected section"
856 A standard section header occurs in a section of the manual
857 where it normally isn't useful.
858 .It Sy "unusual Xr order"
860 In the SEE ALSO section, an
862 macro with a lower section number follows one with a higher number,
865 macros referring to the same section are out of alphabetical order.
866 .It Sy "unusual Xr punctuation"
868 In the SEE ALSO section, punctuation between two
870 macros differs from a single comma, or there is trailing punctuation
874 .It Sy "AUTHORS section without An macro"
876 An AUTHORS sections contains no
878 macros, or only empty ones.
879 Probably, there are author names lacking markup.
881 .Ss "Warnings related to macros and nesting"
883 .It Sy "obsolete macro"
887 manual for replacements.
888 .It Sy "macro neither callable nor escaped"
890 The name of a macro that is not callable appears on a macro line.
891 It is printed verbatim.
892 If the intention is to call it, move it to its own input line;
893 otherwise, escape it by prepending
895 .It Sy "skipping paragraph macro"
898 documents, this happens
901 at the beginning and end of sections and subsections
903 right before non-compact lists and displays
905 at the end of items in non-column, non-compact lists
907 and for multiple consecutive paragraph macros.
911 documents, it happens
923 macros having neither head nor body arguments
934 .It Sy "moving paragraph macro out of list"
938 list contains a trailing paragraph macro.
939 The paragraph macro is moved after the end of the list.
940 .It Sy "skipping no-space macro"
942 An input line begins with an
945 The macro is ignored.
946 .It Sy "blocks badly nested"
948 If two blocks intersect, one should completely contain the other.
949 Otherwise, rendered output is likely to look strange in any output
950 format, and rendering in SGML-based output formats is likely to be
951 outright wrong because such languages do not support badly nested
953 Typical examples of badly nested blocks are
954 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bo \&Ac \&Bc
956 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bq \&Ac .
964 .It Sy "nested displays are not portable"
971 display occurs nested inside another
976 but fails with most other implementations.
977 .It Sy "moving content out of list"
981 list block contains text or macros before the first
984 The offending children are moved before the beginning of the list.
985 .It Sy "fill mode already enabled, skipping"
989 request occurs even though the document is still in fill mode,
990 or already switched back to fill mode.
992 .It Sy "fill mode already disabled, skipping"
996 request occurs even though the document already switched to no-fill mode
997 and did not switch back to fill mode yet.
999 .It Sy "line scope broken"
1001 While parsing the next-line scope of the previous macro,
1002 another macro is found that prematurely terminates the previous one.
1003 The previous, interrupted macro is deleted from the parse tree.
1005 .Ss "Warnings related to missing arguments"
1007 .It Sy "skipping empty request"
1009 The macro name is missing from a macro definition request,
1012 control statement or operation keyword lacks its required argument.
1013 .It Sy "conditional request controls empty scope"
1015 A conditional request is only useful if any of the following
1016 follows it on the same logical input line:
1021 keyword to open a multi-line scope.
1023 A request or macro or some text, resulting in a single-line scope.
1025 The immediate end of the logical line without any intervening whitespace,
1026 resulting in next-line scope.
1028 Here, a conditional request is followed by trailing whitespace only,
1029 and there is no other content on its logical input line.
1030 Note that it doesn't matter whether the logical input line is split
1031 across multiple physical input lines using
1033 line continuation characters.
1034 This is one of the rare cases
1035 where trailing whitespace is syntactically significant.
1036 The conditional request controls a scope containing whitespace only,
1037 so it is unlikely to have a significant effect,
1038 except that it may control a following
1041 .It Sy "skipping empty macro"
1043 The indicated macro has no arguments and hence no effect.
1044 .It Sy "empty block"
1055 block contains nothing in its body and will produce no output.
1056 .It Sy "empty argument, using 0n"
1058 The required width is missing after
1065 .It Sy "missing display type, using -ragged"
1069 macro is invoked without the required display type.
1070 .It Sy "list type is not the first argument"
1074 macro, at least one other argument precedes the type argument.
1077 utility copes with any argument order, but some other
1079 implementations do not.
1080 .It Sy "missing -width in -tag list, using 8n"
1089 .It Sy "missing utility name, using \(dq\(dq"
1093 macro is called without an argument before
1095 has first been called with an argument.
1096 .It Sy "missing function name, using \(dq\(dq"
1100 macro is called without an argument.
1101 No function name is printed.
1102 .It Sy "empty head in list item"
1114 macro lacks the required argument.
1115 The item head is left empty.
1116 .It Sy "empty list item"
1128 An empty list item is shown.
1129 .It Sy "missing font type, using \efR"
1133 macro has no argument.
1134 It switches to the default font.
1135 .It Sy "unknown font type, using \efR"
1139 argument is invalid.
1140 The default font is used instead.
1141 .It Sy "nothing follows prefix"
1145 macro has no argument, or only one argument and no macro follows
1146 on the same input line.
1147 This defeats its purpose; in particular, spacing is not suppressed
1148 before the text or macros following on the next input line.
1149 .It Sy "empty reference block"
1153 macro is immediately followed by an
1155 macro on the next input line.
1156 Such an empty block does not produce any output.
1157 .It Sy "missing section argument"
1161 macro lacks its second, section number argument.
1162 The first argument, i.e. the name, is printed, but without subsequent
1164 .It Sy "missing -std argument, adding it"
1170 macro lacks the required
1177 even when it is not specified, but other implementations may not.
1178 .It Sy "missing option string, using \(dq\(dq"
1182 macro is invoked without any argument.
1183 An empty pair of square brackets is shown.
1184 .It Sy "missing resource identifier, using \(dq\(dq"
1188 macro is invoked without any argument.
1189 An empty pair of angle brackets is shown.
1190 .It Sy "missing eqn box, using \(dq\(dq"
1192 A diacritic mark or a binary operator is found,
1193 but there is nothing to the left of it.
1194 An empty box is inserted.
1196 .Ss "Warnings related to bad macro arguments"
1198 .It Sy "unterminated quoted argument"
1200 Macro arguments can be enclosed in double quote characters
1201 such that space characters and macro names contained in the quoted
1202 argument need not be escaped.
1203 The closing quote of the last argument of a macro can be omitted.
1204 However, omitting it is not recommended because it makes the code
1206 .It Sy "duplicate argument"
1212 macro has more than one
1219 All but the last instances of these arguments are ignored.
1220 .It Sy "skipping duplicate argument"
1224 macro has more than one
1229 All but the first of these arguments are ignored.
1230 .It Sy "skipping duplicate display type"
1234 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1235 .It Sy "skipping duplicate list type"
1239 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1240 .It Sy "skipping -width argument"
1254 .It Sy "wrong number of cells"
1257 list, the number of tabs or
1259 macros is less than the number expected from the list header line
1260 or exceeds the expected number by more than one.
1261 Missing cells remain empty, and all cells exceeding the number of
1262 columns are joined into one single cell.
1263 .It Sy "unknown AT&T UNIX version"
1267 macro has an invalid argument.
1268 It is used verbatim, with
1271 .It Sy "comma in function argument"
1277 macro contains a comma; it should probably be split into two arguments.
1278 .It Sy "parenthesis in function name"
1280 The first argument of an
1284 macro contains an opening or closing parenthesis; that's probably wrong,
1285 parentheses are added automatically.
1286 .It Sy "invalid content in Rs block"
1290 block contains plain text or non-% macros.
1291 The bogus content is left in the syntax tree.
1292 Formatting may be poor.
1293 .It Sy "invalid Boolean argument"
1297 macro has an argument other than
1301 The invalid argument is moved out of the macro, which leaves the macro
1302 empty, causing it to toggle the spacing mode.
1303 .It Sy "unknown font, skipping request"
1311 layout modifier has an unknown
1314 .It Sy "odd number of characters in request"
1318 request contains an odd number of characters.
1319 The last character is mapped to the blank character.
1321 .Ss "Warnings related to plain text"
1323 .It Sy "blank line in fill mode, using .sp"
1325 The meaning of blank input lines is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1326 In fill mode, line breaks of text input lines are not supposed to be
1328 However, for compatibility with groff, blank lines in fill mode
1332 .It Sy "tab in filled text"
1334 The meaning of tab characters is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1335 In fill mode, whitespace is not supposed to be significant
1336 on text input lines.
1337 As an implementation dependent choice, tab characters on text lines
1338 are passed through to the formatters in any case.
1339 Given that the text before the tab character will be filled,
1340 it is hard to predict which tab stop position the tab will advance to.
1341 .It Sy "whitespace at end of input line"
1342 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1343 Whitespace at the end of input lines is almost never semantically
1344 significant \(em but in the odd case where it might be, it is
1345 extremely confusing when reviewing and maintaining documents.
1346 .It Sy "bad comment style"
1348 Comment lines start with a dot, a backslash, and a double-quote character.
1351 utility treats the line as a comment line even without the backslash,
1352 but leaving out the backslash might not be portable.
1353 .It Sy "invalid escape sequence"
1355 An escape sequence has an invalid opening argument delimiter, lacks the
1356 closing argument delimiter, or the argument has too few characters.
1357 If the argument is incomplete,
1361 expand to an empty string,
1367 to the length of the incomplete argument.
1368 All other invalid escape sequences are ignored.
1369 .It Sy "undefined string, using \(dq\(dq"
1371 If a string is used without being defined before,
1372 its value is implicitly set to the empty string.
1373 However, defining strings explicitly before use
1374 keeps the code more readable.
1376 .Ss "Warnings related to tables"
1378 .It Sy "tbl line starts with span"
1380 The first cell in a table layout line is a horizontal span
1382 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1383 .It Sy "tbl column starts with span"
1385 The first line of a table layout specification
1386 requests a vertical span
1388 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1389 .It Sy "skipping vertical bar in tbl layout"
1391 A table layout specification contains more than two consecutive vertical bars.
1392 A double bar is printed, all additional bars are discarded.
1394 .Ss "Errors related to tables"
1396 .It Sy "non-alphabetic character in tbl options"
1398 The table options line contains a character other than a letter,
1399 blank, or comma where the beginning of an option name is expected.
1400 The character is ignored.
1401 .It Sy "skipping unknown tbl option"
1403 The table options line contains a string of letters that does not
1404 match any known option name.
1405 The word is ignored.
1406 .It Sy "missing tbl option argument"
1408 A table option that requires an argument is not followed by an
1409 opening parenthesis, or the opening parenthesis is immediately
1410 followed by a closing parenthesis.
1411 The option is ignored.
1412 .It Sy "wrong tbl option argument size"
1414 A table option argument contains an invalid number of characters.
1415 Both the option and the argument are ignored.
1416 .It Sy "empty tbl layout"
1418 A table layout specification is completely empty,
1419 specifying zero lines and zero columns.
1420 As a fallback, a single left-justified column is used.
1421 .It Sy "invalid character in tbl layout"
1423 A table layout specification contains a character that can neither
1424 be interpreted as a layout key character nor as a layout modifier,
1425 or a modifier precedes the first key.
1426 The invalid character is discarded.
1427 .It Sy "unmatched parenthesis in tbl layout"
1429 A table layout specification contains an opening parenthesis,
1430 but no matching closing parenthesis.
1431 The rest of the input line, starting from the parenthesis, has no effect.
1432 .It Sy "tbl without any data cells"
1434 A table does not contain any data cells.
1435 It will probably produce no output.
1436 .It Sy "ignoring data in spanned tbl cell"
1438 A table cell is marked as a horizontal span
1442 in the table layout, but it contains data.
1443 The data is ignored.
1444 .It Sy "ignoring extra tbl data cells"
1446 A data line contains more cells than the corresponding layout line.
1447 The data in the extra cells is ignored.
1448 .It Sy "data block open at end of tbl"
1450 A data block is opened with
1452 but never closed with a matching
1454 The remaining data lines of the table are all put into one cell,
1455 and any remaining cells stay empty.
1457 .Ss "Errors related to roff, mdoc, and man code"
1459 .It Sy "input stack limit exceeded, infinite loop?"
1461 Explicit recursion limits are implemented for the following features,
1462 in order to prevent infinite loops:
1465 expansion of nested escape sequences
1466 including expansion of strings and number registers,
1468 expansion of nested user-defined macros,
1474 When a limit is hit, the output is incorrect, typically losing
1475 some content, but the parser can continue.
1476 .It Sy "skipping bad character"
1477 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1478 The input file contains a byte that is not a printable
1481 The message mentions the character number.
1482 The offending byte is replaced with a question mark
1484 Consider editing the input file to replace the byte with an ASCII
1485 transliteration of the intended character.
1486 .It Sy "skipping unknown macro"
1487 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1488 The first identifier on a request or macro line is neither recognized as a
1490 request, nor as a user-defined macro, nor, respectively, as an
1495 It may be mistyped or unsupported.
1496 The request or macro is discarded including its arguments.
1497 .It Sy "skipping insecure request"
1499 An input file attempted to run a shell command
1500 or to read or write an external file.
1501 Such attempts are denied for security reasons.
1502 .It Sy "skipping item outside list"
1506 macro occurs outside any
1511 delimiter occurs outside any pile.
1512 It is discarded including its arguments.
1513 .It Sy "skipping column outside column list"
1517 macro occurs outside any
1520 It is discarded including its arguments.
1521 .It Sy "skipping end of block that is not open"
1522 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1523 Various syntax elements can only be used to explicitly close blocks
1524 that have previously been opened.
1527 block closing macro, a
1534 right delimiter or closing brace, or the end of an equation, table, or
1536 conditional request is encountered but no matching block is open.
1537 The offending request or macro is discarded.
1538 .It Sy "fewer RS blocks open, skipping"
1542 macro is invoked with an argument, but less than the specified number of
1548 .It Sy "inserting missing end of block"
1552 macros as well as tables require explicit closing by dedicated macros.
1553 A block that doesn't support bad nesting
1554 ends before all of its children are properly closed.
1555 The open child nodes are closed implicitly.
1556 .It Sy "appending missing end of block"
1557 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1558 At the end of the document, an explicit
1566 block, an equation, table, or
1568 conditional or ignore block is still open.
1569 The open block is closed implicitly.
1570 .It Sy "escaped character not allowed in a name"
1572 Macro, string and register identifiers consist of printable,
1573 non-whitespace ASCII characters.
1574 Escape sequences and characters and strings expressed in terms of them
1575 cannot form part of a name.
1576 The first argument of an
1584 request, or any argument of an
1586 request, or the name of a request or user defined macro being called,
1587 is terminated by an escape sequence.
1593 the request has no effect at all.
1600 what was parsed up to this point is used as the arguments to the request,
1601 and the rest of the input line is discarded including the escape sequence.
1602 When parsing for a request or a user-defined macro name to be called,
1603 only the escape sequence is discarded.
1604 The characters preceding it are used as the request or macro name,
1605 the characters following it are used as the arguments to the request or macro.
1606 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: Bd -file"
1608 For security reasons, the
1610 macro does not support the
1613 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1614 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1615 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1616 The argument is ignored including the file name following it.
1617 .It Sy "skipping display without arguments"
1621 block macro does not have any arguments.
1622 The block is discarded, and the block content is displayed in
1623 whatever mode was active before the block.
1624 .It Sy "missing list type, using -item"
1628 macro fails to specify the list type.
1629 .It Sy "missing manual name, using \(dq\(dq"
1633 or any call in the NAME section, lacks the required argument.
1634 .It Sy "uname(3) system call failed, using UNKNOWN"
1638 macro is called without arguments, and the
1643 can be compiled with
1645 .Fl D Cm OSNAME=\(dq\e\(dq Ar string Cm \e\(dq\(dq .
1647 .It Sy "unknown standard specifier"
1651 macro has an unknown argument and is discarded.
1652 .It Sy "skipping request without numeric argument"
1661 statement has a non-numeric or negative argument or no argument at all.
1662 The invalid request or statement is ignored.
1663 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: .so with absolute path or \(dq..\(dq"
1665 For security reasons,
1669 file inclusion requests only with relative paths
1670 and only without ascending to any parent directory.
1671 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1672 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1673 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1675 only shows the path as it appears behind
1677 .It Sy ".so request failed"
1681 request requires reading an external file, but the file could not be
1684 only shows the path as it appears behind
1686 .It Sy "skipping all arguments"
1687 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , roff
1703 macro in a list that don't support item heads, a
1722 block closing request is invoked with at least one argument.
1723 All arguments are ignored.
1724 .It Sy "skipping excess arguments"
1725 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1726 A macro or request is invoked with too many arguments:
1727 .Bl -dash -offset 2n -width 2n -compact
1736 with more than one argument
1739 with another argument after
1745 with more than one argument or with a non-integer argument
1750 family with more than two arguments
1753 with more than three arguments
1756 with more than five arguments
1762 with invalid arguments
1764 The excess arguments are ignored.
1766 .Ss Unsupported features
1768 .It Sy "input too large"
1772 cannot handle input files larger than its arbitrary size limit
1773 of 2^31 bytes (2 Gigabytes).
1774 Since useful manuals are always small, this is not a problem in practice.
1775 Parsing is aborted as soon as the condition is detected.
1776 .It Sy "unsupported control character"
1778 An ASCII control character supported by other
1780 implementations but not by
1782 was found in an input file.
1783 It is replaced by a question mark.
1784 .It Sy "unsupported roff request"
1786 An input file contains a
1788 request supported by GNU troff or Heirloom troff but not by
1790 and it is likely that this will cause information loss
1791 or considerable misformatting.
1792 .It Sy "eqn delim option in tbl"
1794 The options line of a table defines equation delimiters.
1795 Any equation source code contained in the table will be printed unformatted.
1796 .It Sy "unsupported table layout modifier"
1798 A table layout specification contains an
1801 The modifier is discarded.
1802 .It Sy "ignoring macro in table"
1803 .Pq tbl , mdoc , man
1804 A table contains an invocation of an
1808 macro or of an undefined macro.
1809 The macro is ignored, and its arguments are handled
1810 as if they were a text line.
1825 utility was written by
1826 .An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv
1827 and is maintained by
1828 .An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org .
1832 the maximum size of an element attribute is determined by
1834 which is usually 1024 bytes.
1835 Be aware of this when setting long link
1837 .Fl O Cm style Ns = Ns Ar really/long/link .
git.ckatri.com / mandoc.git / blob