- Why? groff amounts to over 5 MB of source code, most of which is C++ and all of which is GPL. It runs slowly, produces
+ Why? groff amounts to over 5 MB of source code, most of which is C++ and GPL version 3. It runs slowly, produces
uncertain output, and varies in operation from system to system. mdocml strives to fix this (respectively small, C, ISC-licensed, fast and regular).
@@ -39,10 +33,11 @@
- Binary archives consist of pre-compiled binaries, manuals, and other necessary files.
- Universal (Mac OS X) binaries are compiled for the PCC, i386, and x86_64 architectures.
- Windows binaries are compiled with MingW for the 32-bit (i686) and
- 64-bit (x86_64) architectures.
+ mdocml is in ISO C99 and should build and run on any modern system; however, you'll need sqlite3 to build apropos (links to whatis),
+ man.cgi, and mandocdb.
+ To build and install into /usr/local/, just run make install.
+ Be careful: the preconv, apropos, and whatis binary names are usually taken by existing utilities.
@@ -266,7 +257,6 @@
|
bug-reports, general questions, and announcements
- (archive)
|
@@ -276,7 +266,6 @@
|
patches and system discussions
- (archive)
|
@@ -286,7 +275,6 @@
|
source commit messages
- (archive)
|
@@ -295,71 +283,116 @@
News
- xx-xx-2011: version 1.xx.x
+ xx-xx-2013: version 1.13.0
- This version features a new, work-in-progress mandoc output mode: -Tman. This mode
- allows a system maintainer to distribute man media for older systems that may not natively
- support mdoc, such as old Solaris systems.
- The -Ofragment option was added to mandoc's -Thtml and -Txhtml modes.
+ The mandocdb tools (mandocdb, apropos (absorbing whatis), and man.cgi) have been re-written to
+ use sqlite3 as a database.
+
+
+ 05-10-2013: version 1.12.2
- While adding features, an apropos utility has been merged from the mandoc-tools sandbox.
- This interfaces with mandocdb for semantic search of manual content.
+ The mdoc(7) to man(7) converter,
+ to be called as mandoc -Tman, is now fully functional.
- In documentation news, the mdoc and man manuals have been made
- considerably more readable by adding MACRO OVERVIEW sections, by moving the gory details of the LANGUAGE
- SYNTAX to the roff manual, and by moving the very technical MACRO SYNTAX sections
- down to the bottom of the page.
+ The mandoc(1) utility now supports the -Ios (default operating system)
+ input option, and the -Tutf8 output mode now actually works.
- Furthermore, for tbl, the -Tascii mode horizontal spacing of tables was rewritten
- completely. It is now compatible with groff, both
- with and without frames and rulers. Nesting of indented blocks is now supported in man, and
- several bugs were fixed regarding indentation and alignment. The page headers in mdoc are now
- nicer for very long titles.
+ The mandocdb(8) utility no longer truncates existing databases when starting to build new ones,
+ but only replaces them when the build actually succeeds.
-
- 02-09-2011: version 1.11.7
+
+ The man(7) parser now supports the PD macro (paragraph distance),
+ and (for GNU man-ext compatibility only) EX (example block) and EE (example end).
+ Plus several bugfixes regarding indentation, line breaks, and vertical spacing,
+ and regarding RS following TP.
- Added demandoc utility for stripping away macros and escapes. This replaces the
- historical deroff utility. Also improved the mdoc and man manuals.
+ The roff(7) parser now supports the \f(BI (bold+italic) font escape,
+ the \z (zero cursor advance) escape and the cc (change control character)
+ and it (input line trap) requests.
+ Plus bugfixes regarding the \t (tab) escape, nested escape sequences, and conditional requests.
-
- 16-08-2011: version 1.11.6
+
+ In mdoc(7), several bugs were fixed related to UTF-8 output of quoting enclosures,
+ delimiter handling, list indentation and horizontal and vertical spacing,
+ formatting of the Lk, %U, and %C macros,
+ plus some bugfixes related to the handling of syntax errors like badly nested font blocks,
+ stray Ta macros outside column lists, unterminated It Xo blocks,
+ and non-text children of Nm blocks.
- Handling of tr macro in roff implemented. This makes Perl documentation much more
- readable. Hyphenation is also now enabled in man format documents. Many other general
- improvements have been implemented. Furthermore, a 64-bit Windows binary is now available at mdocml-win64.zip and a Mac OS X universal binary is available at mdocml-macosx.zip.
+ In tbl(7), the width of horizontal spans and the vertical spacing around tables was corrected,
+ and in man(7) files, a crash was fixed that was triggered by some particular unclosed T{ macros.
+
+
+ For mandoc developers, we now provide a tbl(3) library manual and gmdiff,
+ a very small, very simplistic groff-versus-mandoc output comparison tool.
- 24-07-2011: version 1.11.5
+ 23-03-2012: version 1.12.1
+
+
+ Significant work on apropos and mandocdb. These tools are
+ now much more robust.
+ A whatis implementation is now handled as an apropos mode.
+ These tools are also able to minimally handle pre-formatted pages, that is, those already formatted by another utility
+ such as GNU troff.
- Significant eqn improvements. mdocml can now parse arbitrary eqn input
- (although few GNU extensions are accepted, nor is mixing low-level roff with eqn). See the eqn
- manual for details. For the time being, equations are rendered as simple in-line text. The equation parser satisfies
- the language specified in the Second
- Edition User's Guide.
+ The man.cgi script is also now available for wider testing. It interfaces with mandocdb manuals cached by catman. HTML output is generated
+ on-the-fly by libmandoc or internal methods to convert pre-formatted pages.
- This is also the first release featuring a distributed Windows binary, available at /binaries/mdocml-win32.zip.
+ The mailing list archive for the discuss and tech lists are being hosted by Gmane at gmane.comp.tools.mdocml.user and gmane.comp.tools.mdocml.devel, respectively.
- See cvsweb for
- historical notes.
+ Lastly, I'm no longer providing binaries, as nobody has asked for them.
+
+
+ -
+ Release notes going back to release 1.9.15, February 18, 2010.
+ Briefly explaining the most important changes in each release in relatively easy terms.
+ Very many changes are not mentioned here.
+
+ -
+ Development history going back to the beginning of the project, November 22, 2008.
+ One-line entries for important commits, releases, merges, hackathons and talks.
+ Makes it easy to find out who did what, and when, and when it became available where.
+ However, this is still incomplete, mentioning only a small fraction of all commits,
+ and to keep the size down, the individual entries are extremely terse and technical.
+ Feel free to look up more details and longer explanations about individual entries
+ in the ChangeLog or in CVS.
+
+ -
+ CVS ChangeLog going back to the beginning of the project.
+ Very technical information of varying quality, strictly chronological.
+ All commits are mentioned, but some messages neglect to mention some changes.
+ Partly terse, partly detailed and verbose. In any case, the ChangeLog is very long -
+ more than 25,000 lines, more than 700 kB.
+
+ -
+ CVS web interface, going back to the beginning of the project.
+ Source code, diffs and commit messages for each source file. The real thing.
+
+