MANDOC(1) BSD General Commands Manual MANDOC(1)NAMEmandoc — format and display UNIX manuals
SYNOPSISmandoc [-V] [-mformat] [-Ooption] [-Toutput] [-Wlevel] [file...]
DESCRIPTION
The mandoc utility formats UNIX manual pages for display. The arguments
are as follows:
-mformat
Input format. See Input Formats for available formats. Defaults
to -mandoc.
-Ooption
Comma-separated output options.
-Toutput
Output format. See Output Formats for available formats.
Defaults to -Tascii.
-V Print version and exit.
-Wlevel
Specify the minimum message level to be reported on the standard
error output and to affect the exit status. The level can be
warning, error, or fatal. The default is -Wfatal; -Wall is an
alias for -Wwarning. See EXIT STATUS and DIAGNOSTICS for
details.
The special option -Wstop tells mandoc to exit after parsing a
file that causes warnings or errors of at least the requested
level. No formatted output will be produced from that file. If
both a level and stop are requested, they can be joined with a
comma, for example -Werror,stop.
file Read input from zero or more files. If unspecified, reads from
stdin. If multiple files are specified, mandoc will halt with
the first failed parse.
By default, mandoc reads mdoc(7) or man(7) text from stdin, implying
-mandoc, and produces -Tascii output.
Input Formats
The mandoc utility accepts mdoc(7) and man(7) input with -mdoc and -man,
respectively. The mdoc(7) format is strongly recommended; man(7) should
only be used for legacy manuals.
A third option, -mandoc, which is also the default, determines encoding
on-the-fly: if the first non-comment macro is ‘Dd’ or ‘Dt’, the mdoc(7)
parser is used; otherwise, the man(7) parser is used.
If multiple files are specified with -mandoc, each has its file-type
determined this way. If multiple files are specified and -mdoc or -man
is specified, then this format is used exclusively.
Output Formats
The mandoc utility accepts the following -T arguments, which correspond
to output modes:
-Tascii
Produce 7-bit ASCII output. This is the default. See ASCII
Output.
-Thtml Produce strict CSS1/HTML-4.01 output. See HTML Output.
-Tlint Parse only: produce no output. Implies -Wwarning.
-Tpdf Produce PDF output. See PDF Output.
-Tps Produce PostScript output. See PostScript Output.
-Ttree Produce an indented parse tree.
-Txhtml
Produce strict CSS1/XHTML-1.0 output. See XHTML Output.
If multiple input files are specified, these will be processed by the
corresponding filter in-order.
ASCII Output
Output produced by -Tascii, which is the default, is rendered in standard
7-bit ASCII documented in ascii(7).
Font styles are applied by using back-spaced encoding such that an under‐
lined character ‘c’ is rendered as ‘_\[bs]c’, where ‘\[bs]’ is the back-
space character number 8. Emboldened characters are rendered as
‘c\[bs]c’.
The special characters documented in mandoc_char(7) are rendered best-
effort in an ASCII equivalent.
Output width is limited to 78 visible columns unless literal input lines
exceed this limit.
The following -O arguments are accepted:
width=width
The output width is set to width, which will normalise to ≥60.
HTML Output
Output produced by -Thtml conforms to HTML-4.01 strict.
The example.style.css file documents style-sheet classes available for
customising output. If a style-sheet is not specified with -Ostyle,
-Thtml defaults to simple output readable in any graphical or text-based
web browser.
Special characters are rendered in decimal-encoded UTF-8.
The following -O arguments are accepted:
includes=fmt
The string fmt, for example, ../src/%I.html, is used as a tem‐
plate for linked header files (usually via the ‘In’ macro).
Instances of ‘%I’ are replaced with the include filename. The
default is not to present a hyperlink.
man=fmt
The string fmt, for example, ../html%S/%N.%S.html, is used as a
template for linked manuals (usually via the ‘Xr’ macro).
Instances of ‘%N’ and ‘%S’ are replaced with the linked manual's
name and section, respectively. If no section is included, sec‐
tion 1 is assumed. The default is not to present a hyperlink.
style=style.css
The file style.css is used for an external style-sheet. This
must be a valid absolute or relative URI.
PostScript Output
PostScript "Adobe-3.0" Level-2 pages may be generated by -Tps. Output
pages default to letter sized and are rendered in the Times font family,
11-point. Margins are calculated as 1/9 the page length and width.
Line-height is 1.4m.
Special characters are rendered as in ASCII Output.
The following -O arguments are accepted:
paper=name
The paper size name may be one of a3, a4, a5, legal, or letter.
You may also manually specify dimensions as NNxNN, width by
height in millimetres. If an unknown value is encountered,
letter is used.
PDF Output
PDF-1.1 output may be generated by -Tpdf. See PostScript Output for -O
arguments and defaults.
XHTML Output
Output produced by -Txhtml conforms to XHTML-1.0 strict.
See HTML Output for details; beyond generating XHTML tags instead of HTML
tags, these output modes are identical.
EXIT STATUS
The mandoc utility exits with one of the following values, controlled by
the message level associated with the -W option:
0 No warnings or errors occurred, or those that did were ignored
because they were lower than the requested level.
2 At least one warning occurred, but no error, and -Wwarning was
specified.
3 At least one parsing error occurred, but no fatal error, and
-Werror or -Wwarning was specified.
4 A fatal parsing error occurred.
5 Invalid command line arguments were specified. No input files
have been read.
6 An operating system error occurred, for example memory exhaustion
or an error accessing input files. Such errors cause mandoc to
exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a
file.
Note that selecting -Tlint output mode implies -Wwarning.
EXAMPLES
To page manuals to the terminal:
$ mandoc-Wall,stop mandoc.1 2>&1 | less
$ mandoc mandoc.1 mdoc.3 mdoc.7 | less
To produce HTML manuals with style.css as the style-sheet:
$ mandoc-Thtml -Ostyle=style.css mdoc.7 > mdoc.7.html
To check over a large set of manuals:
$ mandoc-Tlint `find /usr/src -name \*\.[1-9]`
To produce a series of PostScript manuals for A4 paper:
$ mandoc-Tps -Opaper=a4 mdoc.7 man.7 > manuals.ps
DIAGNOSTICS
Standard error messages reporting parsing errors are prefixed by
file:line:column: level:
where the fields have the following meanings:
file The name of the input file causing the message.
line The line number in that input file. Line numbering starts at 1.
column The column number in that input file. Column numbering starts at
1. If the issue is caused by a word, the column number usually
points to the first character of the word.
level The message level, printed in capital letters.
Message levels have the following meanings:
fatal The parser is unable to parse a given input file at all. No
formatted output is produced from that input file.
error An input file contains syntax that cannot be safely interpreted,
either because it is invalid or because mandoc does not imple‐
ment it yet. By discarding part of the input or inserting miss‐
ing tokens, the parser is able to continue, and the error does
not prevent generation of formatted output, but typically, pre‐
paring that output involves information loss, broken document
structure or unintended formatting.
warning An input file uses obsolete, discouraged or non-portable syntax.
All the same, the meaning of the input is unambiguous and a cor‐
rect rendering can be produced. Documents causing warnings may
render poorly when using other formatting tools instead of
mandoc.
Messages of the warning and error levels are hidden unless their level,
or a lower level, is requested using a -W option or -Tlint output mode.
The mandoc utility may also print messages related to invalid command
line arguments or operating system errors, for example when memory is
exhausted or input files cannot be read. Such messages do not carry the
prefix described above.
COMPATIBILITY
This section summarises mandoc compatibility with GNU troff. Each input
and output format is separately noted.
ASCII Compatibility
· The ‘Bd -literal’ and ‘Bd -unfilled’ macros of mdoc(7) in -Tascii are
synonyms, as are -filled and -ragged.
· In GNU troff, the ‘Pa’ mdoc(7) macro does not underline when scoped
under an ‘It’ in the FILES section. This behaves correctly in
mandoc.
· A list or display following the ‘Ss’ mdoc(7) macro in -Tascii does
not assert a prior vertical break, just as it doesn't with ‘Sh’.
· The ‘na’ man(7) macro in -Tascii has no effect.
· Words aren't hyphenated.
· Sentences are unilaterally monospaced.
HTML/XHTML Compatibility
· The ‘\fP’ escape will revert the font to the previous ‘\f’ escape,
not to the last rendered decoration, which is now dictated by CSS
instead of hard-coded. It also will not span past the current scope,
for the same reason. Note that in ASCII Output mode, this will work
fine.
· The mdoc(7) ‘Bl -hang’ and ‘Bl -tag’ list types render similarly (no
break following overreached left-hand side) due to the expressive
constraints of HTML.
· The man(7) ‘IP’ and ‘TP’ lists render similarly.
SEE ALSOman(7), mandoc_char(7), mdoc(7), roff(7), tbl(7)AUTHORS
The mandoc utility was written by Kristaps Dzonsons ⟨kristaps@bsd.lv⟩.
CAVEATS
In -Thtml and -Txhtml, the maximum size of an element attribute is deter‐
mined by BUFSIZ, which is usually 1024 bytes. Be aware of this when set‐
ting long link formats such as -Ostyle=really/long/link.
Nesting elements within next-line element scopes of -man, such as ‘br’
within an empty ‘B’, will confuse -Thtml and -Txhtml and cause them to
forget the formatting of the prior next-line scope.
The ‘'’ control character is an alias for the standard macro control
character and does not emit a line-break as stipulated in GNU troff.
BSD January 4, 2011 BSD
