Annotation of mandoc/TODO, Revision 1.175
1.1 kristaps 1: ************************************************************************
1.37 kristaps 2: * Official mandoc TODO.
1.175 ! schwarze 3: * $Id: TODO,v 1.174 2014/07/29 15:20:10 schwarze Exp $
1.27 kristaps 4: ************************************************************************
1.145 schwarze 5:
6: ************************************************************************
7: * crashes
8: ************************************************************************
9:
1.169 schwarze 10: - The abort() in bufcat(), html.c, can be triggered via buffmt_includes()
11: by running -Thtml -Oincludes on a file containing a long .In argument.
12: Fixing this will probably require reworking the whole bufcat() concept.
1.101 schwarze 13:
1.61 schwarze 14: ************************************************************************
1.1 kristaps 15: * missing features
16: ************************************************************************
1.70 kristaps 17:
1.79 schwarze 18: --- missing roff features ----------------------------------------------
19:
1.82 schwarze 20: - .ad (adjust margins)
21: .ad l -- adjust left margin only (flush left)
22: .ad r -- adjust right margin only (flush right)
23: .ad c -- center text on line
24: .ad b -- adjust both margins (alias: .ad n)
25: .na -- temporarily disable adjustment without changing the mode
26: .ad -- re-enable adjustment without changing the mode
27: Adjustment mode is ignored while in no-fill mode (.nf).
1.150 schwarze 28:
29: - .fc (field control)
30: found by naddy@ in xloadimage(1)
31:
1.160 schwarze 32: - .nr third argument (auto-increment step size, requires \n+)
33: found by bentley@ in sbcl(1) Mon, 9 Dec 2013 18:36:57 -0700
34:
1.80 schwarze 35: - .ns (no-space mode) occurs in xine-config(1)
36: reported by brad@ Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:45:23 -0500
1.61 schwarze 37:
1.81 schwarze 38: - .ta (tab settings) occurs in ircbug(1) and probably gnats(1)
39: reported by brad@ Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:50:51 -0500
1.167 schwarze 40: also Tcl_NewStringObj(3) via wiz@ Wed, 5 Mar 2014 22:27:43 +0100
1.150 schwarze 41:
42: - .ti (temporary indent)
43: found by naddy@ in xloadimage(1)
44: found by bentley@ in nmh(1) Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:38:28 -0600
1.154 schwarze 45:
46: - .while and .shift
47: found by jca@ in ratpoison(1) Sun, 30 Jun 2013 12:01:09 +0200
1.79 schwarze 48:
1.132 schwarze 49: - \c (interrupted text) should prevent the line break
50: even inside .Bd literal; that occurs in chat(8)
1.155 schwarze 51: also found in cclive(1) - DocBook output
52:
53: - \h horizontal move
54: found in cclive(1) DocBook output
55: Anthony J. Bentley on discuss@ Sat, 21 Sep 2013 22:29:34 -0600
1.125 schwarze 56:
1.160 schwarze 57: - \n+ and \n- numerical register increment and decrement
58: found by bentley@ in sbcl(1) Mon, 9 Dec 2013 18:36:57 -0700
59:
1.167 schwarze 60: - \w'' width measurements
61: would not be very useful without an expression parser, see below
62: needed for Tcl_NewStringObj(3) via wiz@ Wed, 5 Mar 2014 22:27:43 +0100
63:
1.125 schwarze 64: - using undefined strings or macros defines them to be empty
65: wl@ Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:37:01 +0000
1.167 schwarze 66:
1.79 schwarze 67: --- missing mdoc features ----------------------------------------------
68:
1.18 schwarze 69: - fix bad block nesting involving multiple identical explicit blocks
70: see the OpenBSD mdoc_macro.c 1.47 commit message
71:
1.1 kristaps 72: - .Bl -column .Xo support is missing
73: ultimate goal:
74: restore .Xr and .Dv to
75: lib/libc/compat-43/sigvec.3
76: lib/libc/gen/signal.3
77: lib/libc/sys/sigaction.2
78:
1.28 schwarze 79: - edge case: decide how to deal with blk_full bad nesting, e.g.
80: .Sh .Nm .Bk .Nm .Ek .Sh found by jmc@ in ssh-keygen(1)
81: from jmc@ Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:10:32 +0100
82:
1.74 schwarze 83: - \\ is now implemented correctly
84: * when defining strings and macros using .ds and .de
85: * when parsing roff(7) and man(7) macro arguments
86: It does not yet work in mdoc(7) macro arguments
87: because libmdoc does not yet use mandoc_getarg().
88: Also check what happens in plain text, it must be identical to \e.
1.82 schwarze 89:
1.174 schwarze 90: - .Bd -centered implies -filled, not -unfilled, which is not
91: easy to implement; it requires code similar to .ce, which
92: we don't have either.
93: Besides, groff has bug causing text right *before* .Bd -centered
94: to be centered as well.
95:
1.82 schwarze 96: - .Bd -filled should not be the same as .Bd -ragged, but align both
97: the left and right margin. In groff, it is implemented in terms
98: of .ad b, which we don't have either. Found in cksum(1).
1.22 schwarze 99:
1.10 kristaps 100: - implement blank `Bl -column', such as
101: .Bl -column
102: .It foo Ta bar
103: .El
1.11 kristaps 104:
105: - explicitly disallow nested `Bl -column', which would clobber internal
106: flags defined for struct mdoc_macro
1.102 schwarze 107:
108: - In .Bl -column .It, the end of the line probably has to be regarded
109: as an implicit .Ta, if there could be one, see the following mildly
110: ugly code from login.conf(5):
111: .Bl -column minpasswordlen program xetcxmotd
112: .It path Ta path Ta value of Dv _PATH_DEFPATH
113: .br
114: Default search path.
115: reported by Michal Mazurek <akfaew at jasminek dot net>
116: via jmc@ Thu, 7 Apr 2011 16:00:53 +0059
1.42 schwarze 117:
118: - inside `.Bl -column' phrases, punctuation is handled like normal
119: text, e.g. `.Bl -column .It Fl x . Ta ...' should give "-x -."
120:
121: - inside `.Bl -column' phrases, TERMP_IGNDELIM handling by `Pf'
122: is not safe, e.g. `.Bl -column .It Pf a b .' gives "ab."
123: but should give "ab ."
1.12 kristaps 124:
125: - set a meaningful default if no `Bl' list type is assigned
1.13 kristaps 126:
127: - have a blank `It' head for `Bl -tag' not puke
1.20 kristaps 128:
1.174 schwarze 129: - check whether it is correct that `D1' uses INDENT+1;
130: does it need its own constant?
131:
1.20 kristaps 132: - prohibit `Nm' from having non-text HEAD children
133: (e.g., NetBSD mDNSShared/dns-sd.1)
134: (mdoc_html.c and mdoc_term.c `Nm' handlers can be slightly simplified)
1.109 schwarze 135:
1.174 schwarze 136: - support translated section names
137: e.g. x11/scrotwm scrotwm_es.1:21:2: error: NAME section must be first
138: that one uses NOMBRE because it is spanish...
139: deraadt tends to think that section-dependent macro behaviour
140: is a bad idea in the first place, so this may be irrelevant
141:
1.109 schwarze 142: - When there is free text in the SYNOPSIS and that free text contains
143: the .Nm macro, groff somehow understands to treat the .Nm as an in-line
144: macro, while mandoc treats it as a block macro and breaks the line.
145: No idea how the logic for distinguishing in-line and block instances
146: should be, needs investigation.
147: uqs@ Thu, 2 Jun 2011 11:03:51 +0200
148: uqs@ Thu, 2 Jun 2011 11:33:35 +0200
1.57 kristaps 149:
1.79 schwarze 150: --- missing man features -----------------------------------------------
151:
1.119 kristaps 152: - -T[x]html doesn't stipulate non-collapsing spaces in literal mode
1.80 schwarze 153:
1.79 schwarze 154: --- missing tbl features -----------------------------------------------
155:
1.171 schwarze 156: - look at the POSIX manuals in the books/man-pages-posix port,
157: they use some unsupported tbl(7) features.
158:
1.174 schwarze 159: - investigate tbl(1) errors in sox(1)
160: see also naddy@ Sat, 16 Oct 2010 23:51:57 +0200
1.105 kristaps 161:
162: - allow standalone `.' to be interpreted as an end-of-layout
163: delimiter instead of being thrown away as a no-op roff line
164: reported by Yuri Pankov, Wed 18 May 2011 11:34:59 CEST
1.79 schwarze 165:
166: --- missing misc features ----------------------------------------------
1.159 schwarze 167:
168: - italic correction (\/) in PostScript mode
169: Werner LEMBERG on groff at gnu dot org Sun, 10 Nov 2013 12:47:46
1.153 schwarze 170:
1.173 schwarze 171: - When makewhatis(8) encounters a FATAL parse error,
172: it silently treats the file as formatted, which makes no sense
173: at all for paths like man1/foo.1 - and which also contradicts
174: what the manual says at the end of the description.
175: The end result will be ENOENT for file names returned
176: by mansearch() in manpage.file.
177:
1.171 schwarze 178: - makewhatis(8) for preformatted pages:
179: parse the section number from the header line
180: and compare to the section number from the directory name
181:
182: - Does makewhatis(8) detect missing NAME sections, missing names,
183: and missing descriptions in all the file formats?
184:
1.79 schwarze 185: - clean up escape sequence handling, creating three classes:
186: (1) fully implemented, or parsed and ignored without loss of content
187: (2) unimplemented, potentially causing loss of content
188: or serious mangling of formatting (e.g. \n) -> ERROR
189: see textproc/mgdiff(1) for nice examples
190: (3) undefined, just output the character -> perhaps WARNING
1.83 schwarze 191:
1.174 schwarze 192: - kettenis wants base roff, ms, and me Fri, 1 Jan 2010 22:13:15 +0100 (CET)
193:
194: --- compatibility checks -----------------------------------------------
195:
196: - is .Bk implemented correctly in modern groff?
197: sobrado@ Tue, 19 Apr 2011 22:12:55 +0200
198:
1.175 ! schwarze 199: - compare output to Heirloom roff, Solaris roff, and
! 200: http://repo.or.cz/w/neatroff.git http://litcave.rudi.ir/
1.174 schwarze 201:
1.79 schwarze 202: - look at pages generated from reStructeredText, e.g. devel/mercurial hg(1)
203: These are a weird mixture of man(7) and custom autogenerated low-level
204: roff stuff. Figure out to what extent we can cope.
1.80 schwarze 205: For details, see http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html
1.79 schwarze 206: noted by stsp@ Sat, 24 Apr 2010 09:17:55 +0200
207: reminded by nicm@ Mon, 3 May 2010 09:52:41 +0100
1.160 schwarze 208:
1.174 schwarze 209: - look at pages generated from ronn(1) github.com/rtomayko/ronn
210: (based on markdown)
211:
1.160 schwarze 212: - look at pages generated from Texinfo source by yat2m, e.g. security/gnupg
213: First impression is not that bad.
1.172 schwarze 214:
215: - look at pages generated by pandoc; see
216: https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/blob/master/src/Text/Pandoc/Writers/Man.hs
217: porting planned by kili@ Thu, 19 Jun 2014 19:46:28 +0200
1.71 schwarze 218:
219: - check compatibility with Plan9:
220: http://swtch.com/usr/local/plan9/tmac/tmac.an
221: http://swtch.com/plan9port/man/man7/man.html
222: "Anthony J. Bentley" <anthonyjbentley@gmail.com> 28 Dec 2010 21:58:40 -0700
1.63 schwarze 223:
1.174 schwarze 224: - check compatibility with the man(7) formatter
225: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rofl0r/hardcore-utils/master/man.c
226:
1.1 kristaps 227: ************************************************************************
228: * formatting issues: ugly output
229: ************************************************************************
1.87 kristaps 230:
231: - a column list with blank `Ta' cells triggers a spurrious
232: start-with-whitespace printing of a newline
1.1 kristaps 233:
1.39 schwarze 234: - In .Bl -column,
235: .It Em Authentication<tab>Key Length
236: ought to render "Key Length" with emphasis, too,
237: see OpenBSD iked.conf(5).
1.123 schwarze 238: reported again Nicolas Joly via wiz@ Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:20:00 +0200
1.39 schwarze 239:
1.1 kristaps 240: - empty phrases in .Bl column produce too few blanks
241: try e.g. .Bl -column It Ta Ta
242: reported by millert Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:13:46 -0400
1.48 schwarze 243:
1.83 schwarze 244: - .%T can have trailing punctuation. Currently, it puts the trailing
245: punctuation into a trailing MDOC_TEXT element inside its own scope.
246: That element should rather be outside its scope, such that the
247: punctuation does not get underlines. This is not trivial to
248: implement because .%T then needs some features of in_line_eoln() -
249: slurp all arguments into one single text element - and one feature
250: of in_line() - put trailing punctuation out of scope.
251: Found in mount_nfs(8) and exports(5), search for "Appendix".
252:
1.147 schwarze 253: - Trailing punctuation after .%T triggers EOS spacing, at least
254: outside .Rs (eek!). Simply setting ARGSFL_DELIM for .%T is not
255: the right solution, it sends mandoc into an endless loop.
256: reported by Nicolas Joly Sat, 17 Nov 2012 11:49:54 +0100
257:
1.174 schwarze 258: - global variables in the SYNOPSIS of section 3 pages
259: .Vt vs .Vt/.Va vs .Ft/.Va vs .Ft/.Fa ...
260: from kristaps@ Tue, 08 Jun 2010 11:13:32 +0200
261:
1.48 schwarze 262: - in enclosures, mandoc sometimes fancies a bogus end of sentence
263: reminded by jmc@ Thu, 23 Sep 2010 18:13:39 +0059
1.149 schwarze 264:
265: - formatting /usr/local/man/man1/latex2man.1 with groff and mandoc
266: reveals lots of bugs both in groff and mandoc...
267: reported by bentley@ Wed, 22 May 2013 23:49:30 -0600
1.171 schwarze 268:
269: --- PDF issues ---------------------------------------------------------
270:
271: - PDF output doesn't use a monospaced font for .Bd -literal
272: Example: "mandoc -Tpdf afterboot.8 > output.pdf && pdfviewer output.pdf".
273: Search the text "Routing tables".
274: Also check what PostScript mode does when fixing this.
275: reported by juanfra@ Wed, 04 Jun 2014 21:44:58 +0200
1.173 schwarze 276:
277: --- HTML issues --------------------------------------------------------
278:
1.174 schwarze 279: - <dl><dt><dd> formatting is ugly
280: hints are easy to find on the web, e.g.
281: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1713048/
282: see also matthew@ Fri, 18 Jul 2014 19:25:12 -0700
283:
1.173 schwarze 284: - check https://github.com/trentm/mdocml
1.35 kristaps 285:
1.1 kristaps 286: ************************************************************************
1.104 kristaps 287: * formatting issues: gratuitous differences
1.1 kristaps 288: ************************************************************************
1.65 kristaps 289:
290: - .Rv (and probably .Ex) print different text if an `Nm' has been named
291: or not (run a manual without `Nm blah' to see this). I'm not sure
292: that this exists in the wild, but it's still an error.
1.38 schwarze 293:
294: - In .Bl -bullet, the groff bullet is "+\b+\bo\bo", the mandoc bullet
295: is just "o\bo".
296: see for example OpenBSD ksh(1)
1.103 schwarze 297:
1.174 schwarze 298: - In .Bl -enum -width 0n, groff continues one the same line after
299: the number, mandoc breaks the line.
300: mail to kristaps@ Mon, 20 Jul 2009 02:21:39 +0200
301:
1.103 schwarze 302: - .Pp between two .It in .Bl -column should produce one,
303: not two blank lines, see e.g. login.conf(5).
304: reported by jmc@ Sun, 17 Apr 2011 14:04:58 +0059
1.129 schwarze 305: reported again by sthen@ Wed, 18 Jan 2012 02:09:39 +0000 (UTC)
1.39 schwarze 306:
1.83 schwarze 307: - If the *first* line after .It is .Pp, break the line right after
308: the tag, do not pad with space characters before breaking.
309: See the description of the a, c, and i commands in sed(1).
310:
311: - If the first line after .It is .D1, do not assert a blank line
312: in between, see for example tmux(1).
313: reported by nicm@ 13 Jan 2011 00:18:57 +0000
1.147 schwarze 314:
315: - Trailing punctuation after .It should trigger EOS spacing.
316: reported by Nicolas Joly Sat, 17 Nov 2012 11:49:54 +0100
317: Probably, this should be fixed somewhere in termp_it_pre(), not sure.
1.83 schwarze 318:
1.39 schwarze 319: - .Nx 1.0a
320: should be "NetBSD 1.0A", not "NetBSD 1.0a",
321: see OpenBSD ccdconfig(8).
1.83 schwarze 322:
1.39 schwarze 323: - In .Bl -tag, if a tag exceeds the right margin and must be continued
324: on the next line, it must be indented by -width, not width+1;
325: see "rule block|pass" in OpenBSD ifconfig(8).
1.56 schwarze 326:
1.83 schwarze 327: - When the -width string contains macros, the macros must be rendered
328: before measuring the width, for example
329: .Bl -tag -width ".Dv message"
330: in magic(5), located in src/usr.bin/file, is the same
331: as -width 7n, not -width 11n.
1.129 schwarze 332: The same applies to .Bl -column column widths;
333: reported again by Nicolas Joly Thu, 1 Mar 2012 13:41:26 +0100 via wiz@ 5 Mar
1.157 schwarze 334: reported again by Franco Fichtner Fri, 27 Sep 2013 21:02:28 +0200
335: An easy partial fix would be to just skip the first word if it starts
336: with a dot, including any following white space, when measuring.
1.83 schwarze 337:
1.56 schwarze 338: - The \& zero-width character counts as output.
339: That is, when it is alone on a line between two .Pp,
340: we want three blank lines, not two as in mandoc.
1.83 schwarze 341:
1.64 schwarze 342: - Header lines of excessive length:
343: Port OpenBSD man_term.c rev. 1.25 to mdoc_term.c
344: and document it in mdoc(7) and man(7) COMPATIBILITY
345: found while talking to Chris Bennett
1.83 schwarze 346:
347: - trailing whitespace must be ignored even when followed by a font escape,
348: see for example
349: makes
350: \fBdig \fR
351: operate in batch mode
352: in dig(1).
1.166 schwarze 353:
354: ************************************************************************
355: * warning issues
356: ************************************************************************
357:
358: - check that MANDOCERR_BADTAB is thrown in the right cases,
359: i.e. when finding a literal tab character in fill mode,
360: and possibly change the wording of the warning message
361: to refer to fill mode, not literal mode
362: See the mail from Werner LEMBERG on the groff list,
363: Fri, 14 Feb 2014 18:54:42 +0100 (CET)
1.174 schwarze 364:
365: - warn about "new sentence, new line"
366:
367: - mandoc_special does not really check the escape sequence,
368: but just the overall format
369:
370: - integrate mdoclint into mandoc ("end-of-line whitespace" thread)
371: from jmc@ Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:12:09 +0100
372: from kristaps@ Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:34:53 +0200
373: from jmc@ Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:45:37 +0059
374: from kristaps@ Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:02:03 +0200
375:
376: - -Tlint parser errors and warnings to stdout
377: to tech@mdocml, naddy@ Wed, 28 Sep 2011 11:21:46 +0200
378: wait! kristaps@ Sun, 02 Oct 2011 17:12:52 +0200
379:
380: - for system errors, use errno/strerror/warn/err
381:
382: ************************************************************************
383: * documentation issues
384: ************************************************************************
385:
386: - mention hyphenation rules:
387: breaking at letter-letter in text mode (not macro args)
388: proper hyphenation is unimplemented
389:
390: - talk about spacing around delimiters
391: to jmc@, kristaps@ Sat, 23 Apr 2011 17:41:27 +0200
392:
393: - mark macros as: page structure domain, manual domain, general text domain
394: is this useful?
395:
396: - mention /usr/share/misc/mdoc.template in mdoc(7)?
1.1 kristaps 397:
1.9 kristaps 398: ************************************************************************
399: * performance issues
400: ************************************************************************
401:
402: Several areas can be cleaned up to make mandoc even faster. These are
403:
404: - improve hashing mechanism for macros (quite important: performance)
405:
406: - improve hashing mechanism for characters (not as important)
1.23 kristaps 407:
1.37 kristaps 408: - the PDF file is HUGE: this can be reduced by using relative offsets
1.115 kristaps 409:
410: - instead of re-initialising the roff predefined-strings set before each
411: parse, create a read-only version the first time and copy it
1.37 kristaps 412:
1.23 kristaps 413: ************************************************************************
414: * structural issues
415: ************************************************************************
1.122 schwarze 416:
417: - We use the input line number at several places to distinguish
418: same-line from different-line input. That plainly doesn't work
419: with user-defined macros, leading to random breakage.
1.67 schwarze 420:
421: - Find better ways to prevent endless loops
422: in roff(7) macro and string expansion.
1.91 schwarze 423:
1.96 schwarze 424: - Finish cleanup of date handling.
1.91 schwarze 425: Decide which formats should be recognized where.
426: Update both mdoc(7) and man(7) documentation.
427: Triggered by Tim van der Molen Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:30:45 +0100
1.170 schwarze 428:
429: - Consider creating some views that will make the database more
430: readable from the sqlite3 shell. Consider using them to
431: abstract from the database structure, too.
432: suggested by espie@ Sat, 19 Apr 2014 14:52:57 +0200
433:
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