1 .\" $Id: mandoc.1,v 1.155 2015/02/23 13:31:03 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: February 23 2015 $
23 .Nd format and display UNIX manuals
28 .Op Fl I Cm os Li = Ar name
30 .Op Fl K Ns Ar encoding
41 manual pages for display.
49 text from stdin, implying
55 The options are as follows:
58 If the standard output is a terminal device and
62 to paginate the output, just like
66 Copy the formatted manual pages to the standard output without using
70 It can be specified to override
75 This overrides any earlier
81 .It Fl I Cm os Li = Ar name
83 Override the default operating system
93 Display only the SYNOPSIS lines.
96 .It Fl K Ns Ar encoding
97 Specify the input encoding.
105 If not specified, autodetection uses the first match:
106 .Bl -tag -width iso-8859-1
108 if the first three bytes of the input file
109 are the UTF-8 byte order mark (BOM, 0xefbbbf)
111 if the first or second line of the input file matches the
115 .D1 .\e" -*- Oo ...; Oc coding: Ar encoding ; No -*-
117 if the first non-ASCII byte in the file introduces a valid UTF-8 sequence
124 This overrides any earlier
132 Also reverts any earlier
137 .It Fl m Ns Ar format
141 for available formats.
144 .It Fl O Ns Ar option
145 Comma-separated output options.
146 .It Fl T Ns Ar output
150 for available formats.
154 Specify the minimum message
156 to be reported on the standard error output and to affect the exit status.
180 to exit after parsing a file that causes warnings or errors of at least
182 No formatted output will be produced from that file.
187 are requested, they can be joined with a comma, for example
188 .Fl W Ns Cm error , Ns Cm stop .
190 Read input from zero or more files.
191 If unspecified, reads from stdin.
192 If multiple files are specified,
194 will halt with the first failed parse.
203 also supports the options
226 should only be used for legacy manuals.
230 which is also the default, determines encoding on-the-fly: if the first
237 parser is used; otherwise, the
242 files are specified with
244 each has its file-type determined this way.
245 If multiple files are
250 is specified, then this format is used exclusively.
254 utility accepts the following
256 arguments, which correspond to output modes:
257 .Bl -tag -width "-Tlocale"
259 Produce 7-bit ASCII output.
263 Produce HTML5, CSS1, and MathML output.
267 Parse only: produce no output.
269 .Fl W Ns Cm warning .
270 .It Fl T Ns Cm locale
271 Encode output using the current locale.
286 Produce PostScript output.
288 .Sx PostScript Output .
290 Produce an indented parse tree.
292 Encode output in the UTF\-8 multi-byte format.
296 This is a synonym for
300 If multiple input files are specified, these will be processed by the
301 corresponding filter in-order.
305 is rendered in standard 7-bit ASCII documented in
308 Font styles are applied by using back-spaced encoding such that an
312 .Sq _ Ns \e[bs] Ns c ,
315 is the back-space character number 8.
316 Emboldened characters are rendered as
317 .Sq c Ns \e[bs] Ns c .
319 The special characters documented in
321 are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent.
323 Output width is limited to 78 visible columns unless literal input lines
328 arguments are accepted:
330 .It Cm indent Ns = Ns Ar indent
331 The left margin for normal text is set to
333 blank characters instead of the default of five for
337 Increasing this is not recommended; it may result in degraded formatting,
338 for example overfull lines or ugly line breaks.
339 .It Cm width Ns = Ns Ar width
340 The output width is set to
342 which will normalise to \(>=58.
347 conforms to HTML5 using optional self-closing tags.
348 Default styles use only CSS1.
349 Equations rendered from
354 .Pa example.style.css
355 file documents style-sheet classes available for customising output.
356 If a style-sheet is not specified with
359 defaults to simple output (via an embedded style-sheet)
360 readable in any graphical or text-based web
363 Special characters are rendered in decimal-encoded UTF\-8.
367 arguments are accepted:
370 Omit the <!DOCTYPE> declaration and the <html>, <head>, and <body>
371 elements and only emit the subtree below the <body> element.
374 argument will be ignored.
375 This is useful when embedding manual content within existing documents.
376 .It Cm includes Ns = Ns Ar fmt
381 is used as a template for linked header files (usually via the
386 are replaced with the include filename.
387 The default is not to present a
389 .It Cm man Ns = Ns Ar fmt
393 .Ar ../html%S/%N.%S.html ,
394 is used as a template for linked manuals (usually via the
401 are replaced with the linked manual's name and section, respectively.
402 If no section is included, section 1 is assumed.
403 The default is not to
405 .It Cm style Ns = Ns Ar style.css
408 is used for an external style-sheet.
409 This must be a valid absolute or
413 Locale-depending output encoding is triggered with
417 This option is not available on all systems: systems without locale
418 support, or those whose internal representation is not natively UCS-4,
423 for font style specification and available command-line arguments.
425 Translate input format into
428 This is useful for distributing manual sources to legacy systems
435 is passed as input, it is translated into
437 If the input format is
439 the input is copied to the output, expanding any
443 The parser is also run, and as usual, the
447 are displayed before copying the input to the output.
449 PDF-1.1 output may be generated by
452 .Sx PostScript Output
455 arguments and defaults.
456 .Ss PostScript Output
459 Level-2 pages may be generated by
461 Output pages default to letter sized and are rendered in the Times font
463 Margins are calculated as 1/9 the page length and width.
466 Special characters are rendered as in
471 arguments are accepted:
473 .It Cm paper Ns = Ns Ar name
483 You may also manually specify dimensions as
485 width by height in millimetres.
486 If an unknown value is encountered,
493 to force a UTF\-8 locale.
496 for details and options.
498 .Bl -tag -width MANPAGER
500 Any non-empty value of the environment variable
502 will be used instead of the standard pagination program,
505 Specifies the pagination program to use when
508 If neither PAGER nor MANPAGER is defined,
509 .Pa /usr/bin/more Fl s
515 utility exits with one of the following values, controlled by the message
521 .Bl -tag -width Ds -compact
523 No warnings or errors occurred, or those that did were ignored because
524 they were lower than the requested
527 At least one warning occurred, but no error, and
531 At least one parsing error occurred,
532 but no unsupported feature was encountered, and
538 At least one unsupported feature was encountered, and
545 Invalid command line arguments were specified.
546 No input files have been read.
548 An operating system error occurred, for example exhaustion
549 of memory, file descriptors, or process table entries.
552 to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file.
558 .Fl W Ns Cm warning .
560 To page manuals to the terminal:
562 .Dl $ mandoc \-Wall,stop mandoc.1 2\*(Gt&1 | less
563 .Dl $ mandoc mandoc.1 mdoc.3 mdoc.7 | less
565 To produce HTML manuals with
569 .Dl $ mandoc \-Thtml -Ostyle=style.css mdoc.7 \*(Gt mdoc.7.html
571 To check over a large set of manuals:
573 .Dl $ mandoc \-Tlint `find /usr/src -name \e*\e.[1-9]`
575 To produce a series of PostScript manuals for A4 paper:
577 .Dl $ mandoc \-Tps \-Opaper=a4 mdoc.7 man.7 \*(Gt manuals.ps
583 format, for use on systems lacking an
587 .Dl $ mandoc \-Tman foo.mdoc \*(Gt foo.man
589 Messages displayed by
593 .D1 Nm Ns : Ar file : Ns Ar line : Ns Ar column : level : message : macro args
595 Line and column numbers start at 1.
596 Both are omitted for messages referring to an input file as a whole.
597 Macro names and arguments are omitted where meaningless.
598 Fatal messages about invalid command line arguments
599 or operating system errors, for example when memory is exhausted,
606 Message levels have the following meanings:
607 .Bl -tag -width "warning"
609 An input file uses unsupported low-level
612 The output may be incomplete and/or misformatted,
613 so using GNU troff instead of
615 to process the file may be preferable.
617 An input file contains invalid syntax that cannot be safely interpreted.
618 By discarding part of the input or inserting missing tokens,
619 the parser is able to continue, and the error does not prevent
620 generation of formatted output, but typically, preparing that
621 output involves information loss, broken document structure
622 or unintended formatting, no matter whether
624 or GNU troff is used.
625 In many cases, the output of
627 and GNU troff is identical, but in some,
629 is more resilient than GNU troff with respect to malformed input.
631 Non-existent or unreadable input files are also reported on the
634 In that case, the parser cannot even be started and no output
635 is produced from those input files.
637 An input file uses obsolete, discouraged or non-portable syntax.
638 All the same, the meaning of the input is unambiguous and a correct
639 rendering can be produced.
640 Documents causing warnings may render poorly when using other
641 formatting tools instead of
650 levels except those about non-existent or unreadable input files
651 are hidden unless their level, or a lower level, is requested using a
656 .Ss Warnings related to the document prologue
658 .It Sy "missing manual title, using UNTITLED"
662 macro has no arguments, or there is no
664 macro before the first non-prologue macro.
665 .It Sy "missing manual title, using \(dq\(dq"
669 macro, or it has no arguments.
670 .It Sy "lower case character in document title"
672 The title is still used as given in the
677 .It Sy "missing manual section, using \(dq\(dq"
683 macro lacks the mandatory section argument.
684 .It Sy "unknown manual section"
686 The section number in a
688 line is invalid, but still used.
689 .It Sy "missing date, using today's date"
691 The document was parsed as
697 macro has no arguments or only empty arguments;
698 or the document was parsed as
704 macro has less than three arguments or its third argument is empty.
705 .It Sy "cannot parse date, using it verbatim"
711 macro does not follow the conventional format.
712 .It Sy "missing Os macro, using \(dq\(dq"
714 The default or current system is not shown in this case.
715 .It Sy "duplicate prologue macro"
717 One of the prologue macros occurs more than once.
718 The last instance overrides all previous ones.
719 .It Sy "late prologue macro"
725 macro occurs after some non-prologue macro, but still takes effect.
726 .It Sy "skipping late title macro"
730 macro appears after the first non-prologue macro.
731 Traditional formatters cannot handle this because
732 they write the page header before parsing the document body.
733 Even though this technical restriction does not apply to
735 traditional semantics is preserved.
736 The late macro is discarded including its arguments.
737 .It Sy "prologue macros out of order"
739 The prologue macros are not given in the conventional order
743 All three macros are used even when given in another order.
745 .Ss Warnings regarding document structure
747 .It Sy ".so is fragile, better use ln(1)"
749 Including files only works when the parser program runs with the correct
750 current working directory.
751 .It Sy "no document body"
753 The document body contains neither text nor macros.
754 An empty document is shown, consisting only of a header and a footer line.
755 .It Sy "content before first section header"
757 Some macros or text precede the first
762 The offending macros and text are parsed and added to the top level
763 of the syntax tree, outside any section block.
764 .It Sy "first section is not NAME"
766 The argument of the first
774 .It Sy "NAME section without name"
776 The NAME section does not contain any
779 .It Sy "NAME section without description"
781 The NAME section lacks the mandatory
784 .It Sy "description not at the end of NAME"
786 The NAME section does contain an
788 child macro, but other content follows it.
789 .It Sy "bad NAME section content"
791 The NAME section contains plain text or macros other than
795 .It Sy "missing description line, using \(dq\(dq"
799 macro lacks the required argument.
800 The title line of the manual will end after the dash.
801 .It Sy "sections out of conventional order"
803 A standard section occurs after another section it usually precedes.
804 All section titles are used as given,
805 and the order of sections is not changed.
806 .It Sy "duplicate section title"
808 The same standard section title occurs more than once.
809 .It Sy "unexpected section"
811 A standard section header occurs in a section of the manual
812 where it normally isn't useful.
813 .It Sy "unusual Xr order"
815 In the SEE ALSO section, an
817 macro with a lower section number follows one with a higher number,
820 macros refering to the same section are out of alphabetical order.
821 .It Sy "unusual Xr punctuation"
823 In the SEE ALSO section, punctuation between two
825 macros differs from a single comma, or there is trailing punctuation
829 .It Sy "AUTHORS section without An macro"
831 An AUTHORS sections contains no
833 macros, or only empty ones.
834 Probably, there are author names lacking markup.
836 .Ss "Warnings related to macros and nesting"
838 .It Sy "obsolete macro"
842 manual for replacements.
843 .It Sy "macro neither callable nor escaped"
845 The name of a macro that is not callable appears on a macro line.
846 It is printed verbatim.
847 If the intention is to call it, move it to its own input line;
848 otherwise, escape it by prepending
850 .It Sy "skipping paragraph macro"
853 documents, this happens
856 at the beginning and end of sections and subsections
858 right before non-compact lists and displays
860 at the end of items in non-column, non-compact lists
862 and for multiple consecutive paragraph macros.
866 documents, it happens
878 macros having neither head nor body arguments
889 .It Sy "moving paragraph macro out of list"
893 list contains a trailing paragraph macro.
894 The paragraph macro is moved after the end of the list.
895 .It Sy "skipping no-space macro"
897 An input line begins with an
900 The macro is ignored.
901 .It Sy "blocks badly nested"
903 If two blocks intersect, one should completely contain the other.
904 Otherwise, rendered output is likely to look strange in any output
905 format, and rendering in SGML-based output formats is likely to be
906 outright wrong because such languages do not support badly nested
908 Typical examples of badly nested blocks are
909 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bo \&Ac \&Bc
911 .Qq Ic \&Ao \&Bq \&Ac .
919 .It Sy "nested displays are not portable"
926 display occurs nested inside another
931 but fails with most other implementations.
932 .It Sy "moving content out of list"
936 list block contains text or macros before the first
939 The offending children are moved before the beginning of the list.
940 .It Sy ".Vt block has child macro"
944 macro supports plain text arguments only.
945 Formatting may be ugly and semantic searching
946 for the affected content might not work.
947 .It Sy "fill mode already enabled, skipping"
951 request occurs even though the document is still in fill mode,
952 or already switched back to fill mode.
954 .It Sy "fill mode already disabled, skipping"
958 request occurs even though the document already switched to no-fill mode
959 and did not switch back to fill mode yet.
961 .It Sy "line scope broken"
963 While parsing the next-line scope of the previous macro,
964 another macro is found that prematurely terminates the previous one.
965 The previous, interrupted macro is deleted from the parse tree.
967 .Ss "Warnings related to missing arguments"
969 .It Sy "skipping empty request"
971 The macro name is missing from a macro definition request,
974 control statement or operation keyword lacks its required argument.
975 .It Sy "conditional request controls empty scope"
977 A conditional request is only useful if any of the following
978 follows it on the same logical input line:
983 keyword to open a multi-line scope.
985 A request or macro or some text, resulting in a single-line scope.
987 The immediate end of the logical line without any intervening whitespace,
988 resulting in next-line scope.
990 Here, a conditional request is followed by trailing whitespace only,
991 and there is no other content on its logical input line.
992 Note that it doesn't matter whether the logical input line is split
993 across multiple physical input lines using
995 line continuation characters.
996 This is one of the rare cases
997 where trailing whitespace is syntactically significant.
998 The conditional request controls a scope containing whitespace only,
999 so it is unlikely to have a significant effect,
1000 except that it may control a following
1003 .It Sy "skipping empty macro"
1005 The indicated macro has no arguments and hence no effect.
1006 .It Sy "empty block"
1017 block contains nothing in its body and will produce no output.
1018 .It Sy "empty argument, using 0n"
1020 The required width is missing after
1027 .It Sy "missing display type, using -ragged"
1031 macro is invoked without the required display type.
1032 .It Sy "list type is not the first argument"
1036 macro, at least one other argument precedes the type argument.
1039 utility copes with any argument order, but some other
1041 implementations do not.
1042 .It Sy "missing -width in -tag list, using 8n"
1051 .It Sy "missing utility name, using \(dq\(dq"
1055 macro is called without an argument before
1057 has first been called with an argument.
1058 .It Sy "missing function name, using \(dq\(dq"
1062 macro is called without an argument.
1063 No function name is printed.
1064 .It Sy "empty head in list item"
1076 macro lacks the required argument.
1077 The item head is left empty.
1078 .It Sy "empty list item"
1090 An empty list item is shown.
1091 .It Sy "missing font type, using \efR"
1095 macro has no argument.
1096 It switches to the default font.
1097 .It Sy "unknown font type, using \efR"
1101 argument is invalid.
1102 The default font is used instead.
1103 .It Sy "nothing follows prefix"
1107 macro has no argument, or only one argument and no macro follows
1108 on the same input line.
1109 This defeats its purpose; in particular, spacing is not suppressed
1110 before the text or macros following on the next input line.
1111 .It Sy "empty reference block"
1115 macro is immediately followed by an
1117 macro on the next input line.
1118 Such an empty block does not produce any output.
1119 .It Sy "missing -std argument, adding it"
1125 macro lacks the required
1132 even when it is not specified, but other implementations may not.
1133 .It Sy "missing option string, using \(dq\(dq"
1137 macro is invoked without any argument.
1138 An empty pair of square brackets is shown.
1139 .It Sy "missing resource identifier, using \(dq\(dq"
1143 macro is invoked without any argument.
1144 An empty pair of angle brackets is shown.
1145 .It Sy "missing eqn box, using \(dq\(dq"
1147 A diacritic mark or a binary operator is found,
1148 but there is nothing to the left of it.
1149 An empty box is inserted.
1151 .Ss "Warnings related to bad macro arguments"
1153 .It Sy "unterminated quoted argument"
1155 Macro arguments can be enclosed in double quote characters
1156 such that space characters and macro names contained in the quoted
1157 argument need not be escaped.
1158 The closing quote of the last argument of a macro can be omitted.
1159 However, omitting it is not recommended because it makes the code
1161 .It Sy "duplicate argument"
1167 macro has more than one
1174 All but the last instances of these arguments are ignored.
1175 .It Sy "skipping duplicate argument"
1179 macro has more than one
1184 All but the first of these arguments are ignored.
1185 .It Sy "skipping duplicate display type"
1189 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1190 .It Sy "skipping duplicate list type"
1194 macro has more than one type argument; the first one is used.
1195 .It Sy "skipping -width argument"
1209 .It Sy "wrong number of cells"
1212 list, the number of tabs or
1214 macros is less than the number expected from the list header line
1215 or exceeds the expected number by more than one.
1216 Missing cells remain empty, and all cells exceeding the number of
1217 columns are joined into one single cell.
1218 .It Sy "unknown AT&T UNIX version"
1222 macro has an invalid argument.
1223 It is used verbatim, with
1226 .It Sy "comma in function argument"
1232 macro contains a comma; it should probably be split into two arguments.
1233 .It Sy "parenthesis in function name"
1235 The first argument of an
1239 macro contains an opening or closing parenthesis; that's probably wrong,
1240 parentheses are added automatically.
1241 .It Sy "invalid content in Rs block"
1245 block contains plain text or non-% macros.
1246 The bogus content is left in the syntax tree.
1247 Formatting may be poor.
1248 .It Sy "invalid Boolean argument"
1252 macro has an argument other than
1256 The invalid argument is moved out of the macro, which leaves the macro
1257 empty, causing it to toggle the spacing mode.
1258 .It Sy "unknown font, skipping request"
1266 layout modifier has an unknown
1269 .It Sy "odd number of characters in request"
1273 request contains an odd number of characters.
1274 The last character is mapped to the blank character.
1276 .Ss "Warnings related to plain text"
1278 .It Sy "blank line in fill mode, using .sp"
1280 The meaning of blank input lines is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1281 In fill mode, line breaks of text input lines are not supposed to be
1283 However, for compatibility with groff, blank lines in fill mode
1287 .It Sy "tab in filled text"
1289 The meaning of tab characters is only well-defined in non-fill mode:
1290 In fill mode, whitespace is not supposed to be significant
1291 on text input lines.
1292 As an implementation dependent choice, tab characters on text lines
1293 are passed through to the formatters in any case.
1294 Given that the text before the tab character will be filled,
1295 it is hard to predict which tab stop position the tab will advance to.
1296 .It Sy "whitespace at end of input line"
1297 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1298 Whitespace at the end of input lines is almost never semantically
1299 significant \(em but in the odd case where it might be, it is
1300 extremely confusing when reviewing and maintaining documents.
1301 .It Sy "bad comment style"
1303 Comment lines start with a dot, a backslash, and a double-quote character.
1306 utility treats the line as a comment line even without the backslash,
1307 but leaving out the backslash might not be portable.
1308 .It Sy "invalid escape sequence"
1310 An escape sequence has an invalid opening argument delimiter, lacks the
1311 closing argument delimiter, or the argument has too few characters.
1312 If the argument is incomplete,
1316 expand to an empty string,
1322 to the length of the incomplete argument.
1323 All other invalid escape sequences are ignored.
1324 .It Sy "undefined string, using \(dq\(dq"
1326 If a string is used without being defined before,
1327 its value is implicitly set to the empty string.
1328 However, defining strings explicitly before use
1329 keeps the code more readable.
1331 .Ss "Warnings related to tables"
1333 .It Sy "tbl line starts with span"
1335 The first cell in a table layout line is a horizontal span
1337 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1338 .It Sy "tbl column starts with span"
1340 The first line of a table layout specification
1341 requests a vertical span
1343 Data provided for this cell is ignored, and nothing is printed in the cell.
1344 .It Sy "skipping vertical bar in tbl layout"
1346 A table layout specification contains more than two consecutive vertical bars.
1347 A double bar is printed, all additional bars are discarded.
1349 .Ss "Errors related to tables"
1351 .It Sy "non-alphabetic character in tbl options"
1353 The table options line contains a character other than a letter,
1354 blank, or comma where the beginning of an option name is expected.
1355 The character is ignored.
1356 .It Sy "skipping unknown tbl option"
1358 The table options line contains a string of letters that does not
1359 match any known option name.
1360 The word is ignored.
1361 .It Sy "missing tbl option argument"
1363 A table option that requires an argument is not followed by an
1364 opening parenthesis, or the opening parenthesis is immediately
1365 followed by a closing parenthesis.
1366 The option is ignored.
1367 .It Sy "wrong tbl option argument size"
1369 A table option argument contains an invalid number of characters.
1370 Both the option and the argument are ignored.
1371 .It Sy "empty tbl layout"
1373 A table layout specification is completely empty,
1374 specifying zero lines and zero columns.
1375 As a fallback, a single left-justified column is used.
1376 .It Sy "invalid character in tbl layout"
1378 A table layout specification contains a character that can neither
1379 be interpreted as a layout key character nor as a layout modifier,
1380 or a modifier precedes the first key.
1381 The invalid character is discarded.
1382 .It Sy "unmatched parenthesis in tbl layout"
1384 A table layout specification contains an opening parenthesis,
1385 but no matching closing parenthesis.
1386 The rest of the input line, starting from the parenthesis, has no effect.
1387 .It Sy "tbl without any data cells"
1389 A table does not contain any data cells.
1390 It will probably produce no output.
1391 .It Sy "ignoring data in spanned tbl cell"
1393 A table cell is marked as a horizontal span
1397 in the table layout, but it contains data.
1398 The data is ignored.
1399 .It Sy "ignoring extra tbl data cells"
1401 A data line contains more cells than the corresponding layout line.
1402 The data in the extra cells is ignored.
1403 .It Sy "data block open at end of tbl"
1405 A data block is opened with
1407 but never closed with a matching
1409 The remaining data lines of the table are all put into one cell,
1410 and any remaining cells stay empty.
1412 .Ss "Errors related to roff, mdoc, and man code"
1414 .It Sy "input stack limit exceeded, infinite loop?"
1416 Explicit recursion limits are implemented for the following features,
1417 in order to prevent infinite loops:
1420 expansion of nested escape sequences
1421 including expansion of strings and number registers,
1423 expansion of nested user-defined macros,
1429 When a limit is hit, the output is incorrect, typically losing
1430 some content, but the parser can continue.
1431 .It Sy "skipping bad character"
1432 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1433 The input file contains a byte that is not a printable
1436 The message mentions the character number.
1437 The offending byte is replaced with a question mark
1439 Consider editing the input file to replace the byte with an ASCII
1440 transliteration of the intended character.
1441 .It Sy "skipping unknown macro"
1442 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1443 The first identifier on a request or macro line is neither recognized as a
1445 request, nor as a user-defined macro, nor, respectively, as an
1450 It may be mistyped or unsupported.
1451 The request or macro is discarded including its arguments.
1452 .It Sy "skipping insecure request"
1454 An input file attempted to run a shell command
1455 or to read or write an external file.
1456 Such attempts are denied for security reasons.
1457 .It Sy "skipping item outside list"
1461 macro occurs outside any
1466 delimiter occurs outside any pile.
1467 It is discarded including its arguments.
1468 .It Sy "skipping column outside column list"
1472 macro occurs outside any
1475 It is discarded including its arguments.
1476 .It Sy "skipping end of block that is not open"
1477 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1478 Various syntax elements can only be used to explicitly close blocks
1479 that have previously been opened.
1482 block closing macro, a
1489 right delimiter or closing brace, or the end of an equation, table, or
1491 conditional request is encountered but no matching block is open.
1492 The offending request or macro is discarded.
1493 .It Sy "fewer RS blocks open, skipping"
1497 macro is invoked with an argument, but less than the specified number of
1503 .It Sy "inserting missing end of block"
1507 macros as well as tables require explicit closing by dedicated macros.
1508 A block that doesn't support bad nesting
1509 ends before all of its children are properly closed.
1510 The open child nodes are closed implicitly.
1511 .It Sy "appending missing end of block"
1512 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , tbl , roff
1513 At the end of the document, an explicit
1521 block, an equation, table, or
1523 conditional or ignore block is still open.
1524 The open block is closed implicitly.
1525 .It Sy "escaped character not allowed in a name"
1527 Macro, string and register identifiers consist of printable,
1528 non-whitespace ASCII characters.
1529 Escape sequences and characters and strings expressed in terms of them
1530 cannot form part of a name.
1531 The first argument of an
1539 request, or any argument of an
1541 request, or the name of a request or user defined macro being called,
1542 is terminated by an escape sequence.
1548 the request has no effect at all.
1555 what was parsed up to this point is used as the arguments to the request,
1556 and the rest of the input line is discarded including the escape sequence.
1557 When parsing for a request or a user-defined macro name to be called,
1558 only the escape sequence is discarded.
1559 The characters preceding it are used as the request or macro name,
1560 the characters following it are used as the arguments to the request or macro.
1561 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: Bd -file"
1563 For security reasons, the
1565 macro does not support the
1568 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1569 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1570 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1571 The argument is ignored including the file name following it.
1572 .It Sy "missing list type, using -item"
1576 macro fails to specify the list type.
1577 .It Sy "missing manual name, using \(dq\(dq"
1581 lacks the required argument.
1582 .It Sy "uname(3) system call failed, using UNKNOWN"
1586 macro is called without arguments, and the
1591 can be compiled with
1593 .Fl D Cm OSNAME=\(dq\e\(dq Ar string Cm \e\(dq\(dq .
1595 .It Sy "unknown standard specifier"
1599 macro has an unknown argument and is discarded.
1600 .It Sy "skipping request without numeric argument"
1609 statement has a non-numeric or negative argument or no argument at all.
1610 The invalid request or statement is ignored.
1611 .It Sy "NOT IMPLEMENTED: .so with absolute path or \(dq..\(dq"
1613 For security reasons,
1617 file inclusion requests only with relative paths
1618 and only without ascending to any parent directory.
1619 By requesting the inclusion of a sensitive file, a malicious document
1620 might otherwise trick a privileged user into inadvertently displaying
1621 the file on the screen, revealing the file content to bystanders.
1623 only shows the path as it appears behind
1625 .It Sy ".so request failed"
1629 request requires reading an external file, but the file could not be
1632 only shows the path as it appears behind
1634 .It Sy "skipping all arguments"
1635 .Pq mdoc , man , eqn , roff
1651 macro in a list that don't support item heads, a
1670 block closing request is invoked with at least one argument.
1671 All arguments are ignored.
1672 .It Sy "skipping excess arguments"
1673 .Pq mdoc , man , roff
1674 A macro or request is invoked with too many arguments:
1675 .Bl -dash -offset 2n -width 2n -compact
1684 with more than one argument
1687 with another argument after
1693 with more than one argument or with a non-integer argument
1698 family with more than two arguments
1701 with more than three arguments
1704 with more than five arguments
1710 with invalid arguments
1712 The excess arguments are ignored.
1714 .Ss Unsupported features
1716 .It Sy "input too large"
1720 cannot handle input files larger than its arbitrary size limit
1721 of 2^31 bytes (2 Gigabytes).
1722 Since useful manuals are always small, this is not a problem in practice.
1723 Parsing is aborted as soon as the condition is detected.
1724 .It Sy "unsupported control character"
1726 An ASCII control character supported by other
1728 implementations but not by
1730 was found in an input file.
1731 It is replaced by a question mark.
1732 .It Sy "unsupported roff request"
1734 An input file contains a
1736 request supported by GNU troff or Heirloom troff but not by
1738 and it is likely that this will cause information loss
1739 or considerable misformatting.
1740 .It Sy "eqn delim option in tbl"
1742 The options line of a table defines equation delimiters.
1743 Any equation source code contained in the table will be printed unformatted.
1744 .It Sy "unsupported table layout modifier"
1746 A table layout specification contains an
1749 The modifier is discarded.
1750 .It Sy "ignoring macro in table"
1751 .Pq tbl , mdoc , man
1752 A table contains an invocation of an
1756 macro or of an undefined macro.
1757 The macro is ignored, and its arguments are handled
1758 as if they were a text line.
1772 utility was written by
1773 .An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv
1774 and is maintained by
1775 .An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org .
1779 the maximum size of an element attribute is determined by
1781 which is usually 1024 bytes.
1782 Be aware of this when setting long link
1784 .Fl O Ns Cm style Ns = Ns Ar really/long/link .
git.ckatri.com / mandoc.git / blob