-.\" $Id: mandoc.1,v 1.177 2017/03/06 17:26:04 schwarze Exp $
+.\" $Id: mandoc.1,v 1.178 2017/03/08 19:40:59 schwarze Exp $
.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 2009, 2010, 2011 Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv>
.\" Copyright (c) 2012, 2014-2017 Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>
.\" ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
.\" OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
.\"
-.Dd $Mdocdate: March 6 2017 $
+.Dd $Mdocdate: March 8 2017 $
.Dt MANDOC 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
format conforming to
.Lk http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax.text\
"John Gruber's 2004 specification" .
+The output also almost conforms to the
+.Lk http://commonmark.org/ CommonMark
+specification.
+.Pp
+The character set used for the markdown output is ASCII.
+Non-ASCII characters are encoded as HTML entities.
+Since that is not possible in literal font contexts, because these
+are rendered as code spans and code blocks in the markdown output,
+non-ASCII characters are transliterated to ASCII approximations in
+these contexts.
.Pp
Markdown is a very weak markup language, so all semantic markup is
lost, and even part of the presentational markup may be lost.