mandoc/TODO - diff

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Diff for /mandoc/TODO between version 1.171 and 1.185

version 1.171, 2014/06/10 21:19:57

version 1.185, 2014/10/16 01:11:20

Line 3

* $Id$

************************************************************************

Many issues are annotated for difficulty as follows:

- loc = locality of the issue

* single file issue, affects file only, or very few

** single module issue, affects several files of one module

*** cross-module issue, significantly impacts multiple modules

and may require substantial changes to internal interfaces

- exist = difficulty of the existing code in this area

* affected code is straightforward and easy to read and change

** affected code is somewhat complex, but once you understand

the design, not particularly difficult to understand

*** affected code uses a special, exceptionally tricky design

- algo = difficulty of the new algorithm to be written

* the required logic and code is straightforward

** the required logic is somewhat complex and needs a careful design

*** the required logic is exceptionally tricky,

maybe an approach to solve that is not even known yet

- size = the amount of code to be written or changed

* a small number of lines (at most 100, usually much less)

** a considerable amount of code (several dozen to a few hundred)

*** a large amount of code (many hundreds, maybe thousands)

- imp = importance of the issue

* mostly for completeness

** would be nice to have

*** issue causes considerable inconvenience

Obviously, as the issues have not been solved yet, these annotations

are mere guesses, and some may be wrong.

************************************************************************

* crashes

************************************************************************

Line 10

Line 39

- The abort() in bufcat(), html.c, can be triggered via buffmt_includes()

by running -Thtml -Oincludes on a file containing a long .In argument.

Fixing this will probably require reworking the whole bufcat() concept.

loc ** exist * algo * size ** imp **

************************************************************************

* missing features

Line 25

Line 55

.na -- temporarily disable adjustment without changing the mode

.ad -- re-enable adjustment without changing the mode

Adjustment mode is ignored while in no-fill mode (.nf).

loc *** exist *** algo ** size ** imp ** (parser reorg would help)

- .fc (field control)

found by naddy@ in xloadimage(1)

loc ** exist *** algo * size * imp *

- .nr third argument (auto-increment step size, requires \n+)

found by bentley@ in sbcl(1) Mon, 9 Dec 2013 18:36:57 -0700

loc * exist * algo * size * imp **

- .ns (no-space mode) occurs in xine-config(1)

reported by brad@ Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:45:23 -0500

loc *** exist *** algo *** size ** imp *

- .ta (tab settings) occurs in ircbug(1) and probably gnats(1)

reported by brad@ Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:50:51 -0500

also Tcl_NewStringObj(3) via wiz@ Wed, 5 Mar 2014 22:27:43 +0100

loc ** exist *** algo ** size ** imp **

- .ti (temporary indent)

found by naddy@ in xloadimage(1)

found by bentley@ in nmh(1) Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:38:28 -0600

loc ** exist ** algo ** size * imp ** (parser reorg helps a lot)

- .while and .shift

found by jca@ in ratpoison(1) Sun, 30 Jun 2013 12:01:09 +0200

loc * exist ** algo ** size ** imp **

- \c (interrupted text) should prevent the line break

even inside .Bd literal; that occurs in chat(8)

also found in cclive(1) - DocBook output

loc ** exist *** algo ** size * imp *

- \h horizontal move

found in cclive(1) DocBook output

Anthony J. Bentley on discuss@ Sat, 21 Sep 2013 22:29:34 -0600

loc ** exist ** algo ** size * imp ** (parser reorg helps a lot)

- \n+ and \n- numerical register increment and decrement

found by bentley@ in sbcl(1) Mon, 9 Dec 2013 18:36:57 -0700

loc * exist * algo * size * imp **

- \w'' width measurements

- \w'' improve width measurements

would not be very useful without an expression parser, see below

needed for Tcl_NewStringObj(3) via wiz@ Wed, 5 Mar 2014 22:27:43 +0100

loc ** exist *** algo *** size * imp ***

- using undefined strings or macros defines them to be empty

wl@ Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:37:01 +0000

loc * exist * algo * size * imp *

- general expression parser, including arithmetics

to be used at least for .if/.ie and .nr and maybe at other places

could use J.T.Conklin's PD code in bin/expr/expr.c for inspiration

needed for Tcl_NewStringObj(3) via wiz@ Wed, 5 Mar 2014 22:27:43 +0100

--- missing mdoc features ----------------------------------------------

- fix bad block nesting involving multiple identical explicit blocks

see the OpenBSD mdoc_macro.c 1.47 commit message

loc * exist *** algo *** size * imp **

- .Bl -column .Xo support is missing

ultimate goal:

Line 80

Line 118

lib/libc/compat-43/sigvec.3

lib/libc/gen/signal.3

lib/libc/sys/sigaction.2

loc * exist *** algo *** size * imp **

- edge case: decide how to deal with blk_full bad nesting, e.g.

.Sh .Nm .Bk .Nm .Ek .Sh found by jmc@ in ssh-keygen(1)

from jmc@ Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:10:32 +0100

loc * exist *** algo *** size ** imp **

- \\ is now implemented correctly

* when defining strings and macros using .ds and .de

Line 92

Line 132

because libmdoc does not yet use mandoc_getarg().

Also check what happens in plain text, it must be identical to \e.

- .Bd -centered implies -filled, not -unfilled, which is not

easy to implement; it requires code similar to .ce, which

we don't have either.

Besides, groff has bug causing text right *before* .Bd -centered

to be centered as well.

loc *** exist *** algo ** size ** imp ** (parser reorg would help)

- .Bd -filled should not be the same as .Bd -ragged, but align both

the left and right margin. In groff, it is implemented in terms

of .ad b, which we don't have either. Found in cksum(1).

loc *** exist *** algo ** size ** imp ** (parser reorg would help)

- implement blank `Bl -column', such as

.Bl -column

.It foo Ta bar

.El

loc * exist *** algo *** size * imp *

- explicitly disallow nested `Bl -column', which would clobber internal

flags defined for struct mdoc_macro

loc * exist * algo * size * imp **

- In .Bl -column .It, the end of the line probably has to be regarded

as an implicit .Ta, if there could be one, see the following mildly

Line 113

Line 163

Default search path.

reported by Michal Mazurek <akfaew at jasminek dot net>

via jmc@ Thu, 7 Apr 2011 16:00:53 +0059

loc * exist *** algo ** size * imp **

- inside `.Bl -column' phrases, punctuation is handled like normal

text, e.g. `.Bl -column .It Fl x . Ta ...' should give "-x -."

Line 122

Line 173

but should give "ab ."

- set a meaningful default if no `Bl' list type is assigned

loc * exist * algo * size * imp ** (already done?)

- have a blank `It' head for `Bl -tag' not puke

loc * exist * algo * size * imp ** (already done?)

- check whether it is correct that `D1' uses INDENT+1;

does it need its own constant?

loc * exist ** algo ** size * imp **

- prohibit `Nm' from having non-text HEAD children

(e.g., NetBSD mDNSShared/dns-sd.1)

(mdoc_html.c and mdoc_term.c `Nm' handlers can be slightly simplified)

- support translated section names

e.g. x11/scrotwm scrotwm_es.1:21:2: error: NAME section must be first

that one uses NOMBRE because it is spanish...

deraadt tends to think that section-dependent macro behaviour

is a bad idea in the first place, so this may be irrelevant

loc ** exist ** algo ** size * imp **

- When there is free text in the SYNOPSIS and that free text contains

the .Nm macro, groff somehow understands to treat the .Nm as an in-line

macro, while mandoc treats it as a block macro and breaks the line.

Line 136

Line 200

should be, needs investigation.

uqs@ Thu, 2 Jun 2011 11:03:51 +0200

uqs@ Thu, 2 Jun 2011 11:33:35 +0200

loc * exist ** algo *** size * imp **

--- missing man features -----------------------------------------------

Line 145

Line 210

- look at the POSIX manuals in the books/man-pages-posix port,

they use some unsupported tbl(7) features.

loc * exist ** algo ** size ** imp ***

- implement basic non-parametric .de to support e.g. sox(1)

- use Unicode U+2500 to U+256C for table borders

reported by naddy@ Sat, 16 Oct 2010 23:51:57 +0200

in tbl(7) -Tutf-8 output

*** sox(1) still doesn't work, tbl(1) errors need investigation

suggested by bentley@ Tue, 14 Oct 2014 04:10:55 -0600

loc * exist ** algo * size * imp **

- allow standalone `.' to be interpreted as an end-of-layout

delimiter instead of being thrown away as a no-op roff line

reported by Yuri Pankov, Wed 18 May 2011 11:34:59 CEST

loc ** exist ** algo ** size * imp **

--- missing eqn features -----------------------------------------------

- The "size" keyword is parsed, but ignored by the formatter.

loc * exist * algo * size * imp *

- The spacing characters `~', `^', and tab are currently ignored,

see User's Guide (Second Edition) page 2 section 4.

loc * exist * algo ** size * imp **

- Mark and lineup are parsed and ignored,

see User's Guide (Second Edition) page 5 section 15.

loc ** exist ** algo ** size ** imp **

--- missing misc features ----------------------------------------------

- italic correction (\/) in PostScript mode

Werner LEMBERG on groff at gnu dot org Sun, 10 Nov 2013 12:47:46

loc ** exist ** algo * size * imp *

- The whatis(1) utility looks for whole words in Nm.

- When makewhatis(8) encounters a FATAL parse error,

If the file name of a page does not agree with the contents of any

it silently treats the file as formatted, which makes no sense

of its Nm macros (e.g. pool(9)), add the file name as an Nm entry

at all for paths like man1/foo.1 - and which also contradicts

to the mandoc.db as well, such that whatis(1) finds it.

what the manual says at the end of the description.

If there is a page with a file name that does not appear as a substring

The end result will be ENOENT for file names returned

neither in Nm nor in Nd, the same fix would allow finding that page

by mansearch() in manpage.file.

with apropos(1) using the file name as a key, as well.

loc * exist * algo * size * imp **

Issue reported by tedu@ Fri, 05 Jul 2013 21:15:23 -0400

- makewhatis(8) for preformatted pages:

parse the section number from the header line

and compare to the section number from the directory name

loc * exist * algo * size * imp **

- Does makewhatis(8) detect missing NAME sections, missing names,

and missing descriptions in all the file formats?

loc * exist * algo * size * imp ***

- clean up escape sequence handling, creating three classes:

(1) fully implemented, or parsed and ignored without loss of content

Line 181

Line 264

or serious mangling of formatting (e.g. \n) -> ERROR

see textproc/mgdiff(1) for nice examples

(3) undefined, just output the character -> perhaps WARNING

loc *** exist ** algo ** size ** imp *** (parser reorg helps)

- kettenis wants base roff, ms, and me Fri, 1 Jan 2010 22:13:15 +0100 (CET)

loc ** exist ** algo ** size *** imp *

--- compatibility checks -----------------------------------------------

- is .Bk implemented correctly in modern groff?

sobrado@ Tue, 19 Apr 2011 22:12:55 +0200

- compare output to Heirloom roff, Solaris roff, and

http://repo.or.cz/w/neatroff.git http://litcave.rudi.ir/

- look at AT&T DWB http://www2.research.att.com/sw/download

Carsten Kunze <carsten dot kunze at arcor dot de> has patches

Mon, 4 Aug 2014 17:01:28 +0200

- look at pages generated from reStructeredText, e.g. devel/mercurial hg(1)

These are a weird mixture of man(7) and custom autogenerated low-level

roff stuff. Figure out to what extent we can cope.

Line 189

Line 288

noted by stsp@ Sat, 24 Apr 2010 09:17:55 +0200

reminded by nicm@ Mon, 3 May 2010 09:52:41 +0100

- look at pages generated from ronn(1) github.com/rtomayko/ronn

(based on markdown)

- look at pages generated from Texinfo source by yat2m, e.g. security/gnupg

First impression is not that bad.

- look at pages generated by pandoc; see

https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/blob/master/src/Text/Pandoc/Writers/Man.hs

porting planned by kili@ Thu, 19 Jun 2014 19:46:28 +0200

- check compatibility with Plan9:

http://swtch.com/usr/local/plan9/tmac/tmac.an

http://swtch.com/plan9port/man/man7/man.html

"Anthony J. Bentley" <anthonyjbentley@gmail.com> 28 Dec 2010 21:58:40 -0700

- check compatibility with the man(7) formatter

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rofl0r/hardcore-utils/master/man.c

************************************************************************

* formatting issues: ugly output

************************************************************************

Line 209

Line 318

ought to render "Key Length" with emphasis, too,

see OpenBSD iked.conf(5).

reported again Nicolas Joly via wiz@ Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:20:00 +0200

loc * exist *** algo *** size ** imp ***

- empty phrases in .Bl column produce too few blanks

try e.g. .Bl -column It Ta Ta

reported by millert Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:13:46 -0400

loc * exist *** algo *** size * imp **

- .%T can have trailing punctuation. Currently, it puts the trailing

punctuation into a trailing MDOC_TEXT element inside its own scope.

Line 222

Line 333

slurp all arguments into one single text element - and one feature

of in_line() - put trailing punctuation out of scope.

Found in mount_nfs(8) and exports(5), search for "Appendix".

loc ** exist ** algo *** size * imp **

- Trailing punctuation after .%T triggers EOS spacing, at least

outside .Rs (eek!). Simply setting ARGSFL_DELIM for .%T is not

the right solution, it sends mandoc into an endless loop.

reported by Nicolas Joly Sat, 17 Nov 2012 11:49:54 +0100

loc * exist ** algo ** size * imp **

- global variables in the SYNOPSIS of section 3 pages

.Vt vs .Vt/.Va vs .Ft/.Va vs .Ft/.Fa ...

from kristaps@ Tue, 08 Jun 2010 11:13:32 +0200

- in enclosures, mandoc sometimes fancies a bogus end of sentence

reminded by jmc@ Thu, 23 Sep 2010 18:13:39 +0059

loc * exist ** algo *** size * imp ***

- formatting /usr/local/man/man1/latex2man.1 with groff and mandoc

reveals lots of bugs both in groff and mandoc...

Line 242

Line 360

Search the text "Routing tables".

Also check what PostScript mode does when fixing this.

reported by juanfra@ Wed, 04 Jun 2014 21:44:58 +0200

loc * exist ** algo ? size * imp **

--- HTML issues --------------------------------------------------------

- <dl><dt><dd> formatting is ugly

hints are easy to find on the web, e.g.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1713048/

see also matthew@ Fri, 18 Jul 2014 19:25:12 -0700

loc * exist * algo ** size * imp ***

- The tables used to render the three-part page headers actually force

the width of the <body> to the max-width given for <html>.

Not yet sure how to fix that...

Observed by an Anonymous Coward on undeadly.org:

http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20140925064244&pid=1

loc * exist * algo ** size * imp ***

- consider whether <var> can be used for Ar Dv Er Ev Fa Va.

from bentley@ Wed, 13 Aug 2014 09:17:55 -0600

- check https://github.com/trentm/mdocml

************************************************************************

* formatting issues: gratuitous differences

************************************************************************

Line 250

Line 389

- .Rv (and probably .Ex) print different text if an `Nm' has been named

or not (run a manual without `Nm blah' to see this). I'm not sure

that this exists in the wild, but it's still an error.

loc * exist * algo * size * imp * (already done?)

- In .Bl -bullet, the groff bullet is "+\b+\bo\bo", the mandoc bullet

is just "o\bo".

is just "o\bo". The problem is to not break ps/pdf when fixing.

see for example OpenBSD ksh(1)

loc ** exist ** algo ** size * imp **

- In .Bl -enum -width 0n, groff continues one the same line after

the number, mandoc breaks the line.

mail to kristaps@ Mon, 20 Jul 2009 02:21:39 +0200

loc * exist ** algo ** size * imp **

- .Pp between two .It in .Bl -column should produce one,

not two blank lines, see e.g. login.conf(5).

reported by jmc@ Sun, 17 Apr 2011 14:04:58 +0059

reported again by sthen@ Wed, 18 Jan 2012 02:09:39 +0000 (UTC)

loc * exist *** algo ** size * imp **

- If the *first* line after .It is .Pp, break the line right after

the tag, do not pad with space characters before breaking.

See the description of the a, c, and i commands in sed(1).

loc * exist ** algo ** size * imp **

- If the first line after .It is .D1, do not assert a blank line

in between, see for example tmux(1).

reported by nicm@ 13 Jan 2011 00:18:57 +0000

loc * exist ** algo ** size * imp **

- Trailing punctuation after .It should trigger EOS spacing.

reported by Nicolas Joly Sat, 17 Nov 2012 11:49:54 +0100

Probably, this should be fixed somewhere in termp_it_pre(), not sure.

loc * exist ** algo ** size * imp **

- .Nx 1.0a

should be "NetBSD 1.0A", not "NetBSD 1.0a",

see OpenBSD ccdconfig(8).

loc * exist * algo * size * imp **

- In .Bl -tag, if a tag exceeds the right margin and must be continued

on the next line, it must be indented by -width, not width+1;

see "rule block|pass" in OpenBSD ifconfig(8).

loc * exist *** algo ** size * imp **

- When the -width string contains macros, the macros must be rendered

before measuring the width, for example

Line 288

Line 440

The same applies to .Bl -column column widths;

reported again by Nicolas Joly Thu, 1 Mar 2012 13:41:26 +0100 via wiz@ 5 Mar

reported again by Franco Fichtner Fri, 27 Sep 2013 21:02:28 +0200

loc *** exist *** algo *** size ** imp ***

An easy partial fix would be to just skip the first word if it starts

with a dot, including any following white space, when measuring.

loc * exist * algo * size * imp ***

- The \& zero-width character counts as output.

That is, when it is alone on a line between two .Pp,

we want three blank lines, not two as in mandoc.

loc ** exist ** algo ** size * imp **

- Header lines of excessive length:

Port OpenBSD man_term.c rev. 1.25 to mdoc_term.c

and document it in mdoc(7) and man(7) COMPATIBILITY

found while talking to Chris Bennett

loc * exist * algo * size * imp *

- trailing whitespace must be ignored even when followed by a font escape,

see for example

Line 306

Line 462

\fBdig \fR

operate in batch mode

in dig(1).

loc ** exist ** algo ** size * imp **

************************************************************************

* warning issues

Line 317

Line 474

to refer to fill mode, not literal mode

See the mail from Werner LEMBERG on the groff list,

Fri, 14 Feb 2014 18:54:42 +0100 (CET)

loc * exist ** algo ** size * imp **

- warn about "new sentence, new line"

loc ** exist ** algo *** size * imp **

- mandoc_special does not really check the escape sequence,

but just the overall format

loc ** exist ** algo *** size ** imp **

- integrate mdoclint into mandoc ("end-of-line whitespace" thread)

from jmc@ Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:12:09 +0100

from kristaps@ Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:34:53 +0200

from jmc@ Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:45:37 +0059

from kristaps@ Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:02:03 +0200

(mostly done, check what remains)

- -Tlint parser errors and warnings to stdout

to tech@mdocml, naddy@ Wed, 28 Sep 2011 11:21:46 +0200

wait! kristaps@ Sun, 02 Oct 2011 17:12:52 +0200

- for system errors, use errno/strerror/warn/err

************************************************************************

* documentation issues

************************************************************************

- mention hyphenation rules:

breaking at letter-letter in text mode (not macro args)

proper hyphenation is unimplemented

- talk about spacing around delimiters

to jmc@, kristaps@ Sat, 23 Apr 2011 17:41:27 +0200

- mark macros as: page structure domain, manual domain, general text domain

is this useful?

- mention /usr/share/misc/mdoc.template in mdoc(7)?

- Is all the content from http://www.std.com/obi/BSD/doc/usd/28.tbl/tbl

covered in tbl(7)?

************************************************************************

* performance issues

************************************************************************

- Why are we using MAP_SHARED, not MAP_PRIVATE for mmap(2)?

How does SQLITE_CONFIG_PAGECACHE actually work? Document it!

from kristaps@ Sat, 09 Aug 2014 13:51:36 +0200

Several areas can be cleaned up to make mandoc even faster. These are

- improve hashing mechanism for macros (quite important: performance)

Line 332 Several areas can be cleaned up to make mandoc even fa

Line 533 Several areas can be cleaned up to make mandoc even fa

- instead of re-initialising the roff predefined-strings set before each

parse, create a read-only version the first time and copy it

loc * exist ** algo ** size * imp **

************************************************************************

* structural issues

Line 353 Several areas can be cleaned up to make mandoc even fa

Line 555 Several areas can be cleaned up to make mandoc even fa

readable from the sqlite3 shell. Consider using them to

abstract from the database structure, too.

suggested by espie@ Sat, 19 Apr 2014 14:52:57 +0200

************************************************************************

* CGI issues

************************************************************************

- Enable HTTP compression by detecting gzip encoding and filtering

output through libz.

- Sandbox (see OpenSSH).

- Enable caching support via HTTP 304 and If-Modified-Since.

- Allow for cgi.h to be overridden by CGI environment variables.

Otherwise, binary distributions will inherit the compile-time

behaviour, which is not optimal.

- Have Mac OSX systems automatically disable -static compilation of the

CGI: -static isn't supported.

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