mandoc/mdoc.7 - diff

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Diff for /mandoc/mdoc.7 between version 1.248 and 1.263

version 1.248, 2015/01/03 00:59:13

version 1.263, 2017/05/05 02:31:35

Line 1

.\" $Id$

.\"

.\" Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any

.\" purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above

Line 304 Print verbose information.

\&.El

.Ed

.Pp

List the options in alphabetical order,

uppercase before lowercase for each letter and

with no regard to whether an option takes an argument.

Put digits in ascending order before all letter options.

.Pp

Manuals not documenting a command won't include the above fragment.

.Pp

Since the

Line 471 in the alphabetical

Line 476 in the alphabetical

.It Sx \&Ap Ta apostrophe without surrounding whitespace (no arguments)

.It Sx \&Sm Ta switch horizontal spacing mode: Op Cm on | off

.It Sx \&Bk , \&Ek Ta keep block: Fl words

.It Sx \&br Ta force output line break in text mode (no arguments)

.It Sx \&sp Ta force vertical space: Op Ar height

.El

.Ss Semantic markup for command line utilities:

Line 777 The

Line 781 The

must be one of the following:

.Bl -tag -width 13n -offset indent

.It Fl centered

Produce one output line from each input line, and centre-justify each line.

Produce one output line from each input line, and center-justify each line.

Using this display type is not recommended; many

.Nm

implementations render it poorly.

Line 822 which has no effect;

Line 826 which has no effect;

.Cm right ,

which justifies to the right margin; or

.Cm center ,

which aligns around an imagined centre axis.

which aligns around an imagined center axis.

.It

A macro invocation, which selects a predefined width

associated with that macro.

Line 969 argument.

Line 973 argument.

A columnated list.

The

.Fl width

argument has no effect; instead, each argument specifies the width

argument has no effect; instead, the string length of each argument

of one column, using either the scaling width syntax described in

specifies the width of one column.

.Xr roff 7

or the string length of the argument.

If the first line of the body of a

.Fl column

list is not an

Line 1622 See also

Line 1624 See also

A function name.

Its syntax is as follows:

.Bd -ragged -offset indent

.Pf \. Ns Sx \&Fn

.Pf . Sx \&Fn

.Op Ar functype

.Ar funcname

.Op Oo Ar argtype Oc Ar argname

Line 1758 is preferred for displaying code; the

Line 1760 is preferred for displaying code; the

.Sx \&Ic

macro is used when referring to specific instructions.

.Ss \&In

The name of an include file.

.Dq include

This macro is most often used in section 2, 3, and 9 manual pages.

file.

.Pp

When invoked as the first macro on an input line in the

.Em SYNOPSIS

section, the argument is displayed in angle brackets

and preceded by

.Dq #include ,

.Qq #include ,

and a blank line is inserted in front if there is a preceding

function declaration.

This is most often used in section 2, 3, and 9 manual pages.

In other sections, it only encloses its argument in angle brackets

and causes no line break.

.Pp

Examples:

.Dl \&.In sys/types.h

Line 1825 The

Line 1828 The

list is the most complicated.

Its syntax is as follows:

.Pp

.D1 Pf \. Sx \&It Ar cell Op <TAB> Ar cell ...

.D1 Pf \. Sx \&It Ar cell Op Sx \&Ta Ar cell ...

.D1 Pf \. Sx \&It Ar cell Op <TAB> Ar cell ...

.Pp

The arguments consist of one or more lines of text and macros

representing a complete table line.

Cells within the line are delimited by tabs or by the special

Cells within the line are delimited by the special

.Sx \&Ta

block macro.

block macro or by literal tab characters.

.Pp

Using literal tabs is strongly discouraged because they are very

hard to use correctly and

.Nm

code using them is very hard to read.

In particular, a blank character is syntactically significant

before and after the literal tab character.

If a word precedes or follows the tab without an intervening blank,

that word is never interpreted as a macro call, but always output

literally.

.Pp

The tab cell delimiter may only be used within the

.Sx \&It

line itself; on following lines, only the

Line 1847 Note that quoted strings may span tab-delimited cells

Line 1861 Note that quoted strings may span tab-delimited cells

line.

For example,

.Pp

.Dl .It \(dqcol1 ; <TAB> col2 ;\(dq \&;

.Dl .It \(dqcol1 ,\& <TAB> col2 ,\(dq \&;

.Pp

will preserve the semicolon whitespace except for the last.

will preserve the whitespace before both commas,

but not the whitespace before the semicolon.

.Pp

See also

Line 2268 Examples:

Line 2285 Examples:

\&.%A J. D. Ullman

\&.%B Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation

\&.%I Addison-Wesley

\&.%C Reading, Massachusettes

\&.%C Reading, Massachusetts

\&.%D 1979

\&.Re

.Ed

Line 2706 Link to another manual

Line 2723 Link to another manual

.Pq Qq cross-reference .

Its syntax is as follows:

.Pp

.D1 Pf \. Sx \&Xr Ar name Op section

.D1 Pf \. Sx \&Xr Ar name section

.Pp

Cross reference the

.Ar name

and

.Ar section

number of another man page;

number of another man page.

omitting the section number is rarely useful.

.Pp

Examples:

.Dl \&.Xr mandoc 1

.Dl \&.Xr mandoc 1 \&;

.Dl \&.Xr mandoc 1 \&Ns s behaviour

.Ss \&br

Emits a line-break.

This macro should not be used; it is implemented for compatibility with

historical manuals.

.Pp

Consider using

.Sx \&Pp

in the event of natural paragraph breaks.

.Ss \&sp

Emits vertical space.

This macro should not be used; it is implemented for compatibility with

Line 3025 then the macro accepts an arbitrary number of argument

Line 3033 then the macro accepts an arbitrary number of argument

.It Sx \&Ux Ta Yes Ta Yes Ta n

.It Sx \&Va Ta Yes Ta Yes Ta n

.It Sx \&Vt Ta Yes Ta Yes Ta >0

.It Sx \&Xr Ta Yes Ta Yes Ta >0

.It Sx \&Xr Ta Yes Ta Yes Ta 2

.It Sx \&br Ta \&No Ta \&No Ta 0

.It Sx \&sp Ta \&No Ta \&No Ta 1

.El

.Ss Delimiters

Line 3045 For many macros, when the leading arguments are openin

Line 3052 For many macros, when the leading arguments are openin

these delimiters are put before the macro scope,

and when the trailing arguments are closing delimiters,

these delimiters are put after the macro scope.

Spacing is suppressed after opening delimiters

and before closing delimiters.

For example,

.Pp

.D1 Pf \. \&Aq "( [ word ] ) ."

Line 3101 renders as:

Line 3110 renders as:

.D1 Fl a ( b | c \*(Ba d ) e

.Pp

This applies to both opening and closing delimiters,

and also to the middle delimiter:

and also to the middle delimiter, which does not suppress spacing:

.Pp

.Bl -tag -width Ds -offset indent -compact

.It \&|

Line 3133 Manually switching the font using the

Line 3142 Manually switching the font using the

font escape sequences is never required.

.Sh COMPATIBILITY

This section provides an incomplete list of compatibility issues

between mandoc and other troff implementations, at this time limited

between mandoc and GNU troff

to GNU troff

.Pq Qq groff .

The term

.Qq historic groff

refers to groff versions before 1.17,

which featured a significant update of the

.Pa doc.tmac

file.

.Pp

Heirloom troff, the other significant troff implementation accepting

\-mdoc, is similar to historic groff.

.Pp

The following problematic behaviour is found in groff:

.ds hist (Historic groff only.)

.Pp

.Bl -dash -compact

.It

Display macros

.Po

.Sx \&Bd ,

.Sx \&Dl ,

and

.Sx \&D1

.Pc

may not be nested.

\*[hist]

.It

.Sx \&At

with unknown arguments produces no output at all.

\*[hist]

Newer groff and mandoc print

.Qq AT&T UNIX

and the arguments.

.It

.Sx \&Bl Fl column

does not recognise trailing punctuation characters when they immediately

precede tabulator characters, but treats them as normal text and

outputs a space before them.

.It

.Sx \&Bd Fl ragged compact

does not start a new line.

\*[hist]

.It

.Sx \&Dd

with non-standard arguments behaves very strangely.

When there are three arguments, they are printed verbatim.

Line 3185 but without any arguments the string

Line 3157 but without any arguments the string

.Dq Epoch

is printed.

.It

.Sx \&Fl

does not print a dash for an empty argument.

\*[hist]

.It

.Sx \&Fn

does not start a new line unless invoked as the line macro in the

.Em SYNOPSIS

section.

\*[hist]

.It

.Sx \&Fo

with

.Pf non- Sx \&Fa

children causes inconsistent spacing between arguments.

In mandoc, a single space is always inserted between arguments.

.It

.Sx \&Ft

in the

.Em SYNOPSIS

causes inconsistent vertical spacing, depending on whether a prior

.Sx \&Fn

has been invoked.

See

.Sx \&Ft

and

.Sx \&Fn

for the normalised behaviour in mandoc.

.It

.Sx \&In

ignores additional arguments and is not treated specially in the

.Em SYNOPSIS .

\*[hist]

.It

.Sx \&It

sometimes requires a

.Fl nested

flag.

\*[hist]

In new groff and mandoc, any list may be nested by default and

.Fl enum

lists will restart the sequence only for the sub-list.

.It

.Sx \&Li

followed by a delimiter is incorrectly used in some manuals

instead of properly quoting that character, which sometimes works with

historic groff.

.It

.Sx \&Lk

only accepts a single link-name argument; the remainder is misformatted.

.It

Line 3245 can only be called by other macros, but not at the beg

Line 3170 can only be called by other macros, but not at the beg

.Sx \&%C

is not implemented (up to and including groff-1.22.2).

.It

Historic groff only allows up to eight or nine arguments per macro input

line, depending on the exact situation.

Providing more arguments causes garbled output.

The number of arguments on one input line is not limited with mandoc.

.It

Historic groff has many un-callable macros.

Most of these (excluding some block-level macros) are callable

in new groff and mandoc.

.It

.Sq \(ba

(vertical bar) is not fully supported as a delimiter.

\*[hist]

.It

.Sq \ef

.Pq font face

and

Line 3275 The following features are unimplemented in mandoc:

Line 3187 The following features are unimplemented in mandoc:

.Bl -dash -compact

.It

.Sx \&Bd

.Fl file Ar file .

.Fl file Ar file

is unsupported for security reasons.

.It

.Sx \&Bd

.Fl filled

does not adjust the right margin, but is an alias for

.Sx \&Bd

.Fl ragged .

.It

.Sx \&Bd

.Fl literal

does not use a literal font, but is an alias for

.Sx \&Bd

.Fl unfilled .

.It

.Sx \&Bd

.Fl offset Cm center

and

.Fl offset Cm right .

.Fl offset Cm right

Groff does not implement centred and flush-right rendering either,

don't work.

Groff does not implement centered and flush-right rendering either,

but produces large indentations.

.El

.Sh SEE ALSO

Line 3292 but produces large indentations.

Line 3218 but produces large indentations.

.Xr mandoc_char 7 ,

.Xr roff 7 ,

.Xr tbl 7

.Pp

The web page

.Lk http://mdocml.bsd.lv/mdoc/ "extended documentation for the mdoc language"

provides a few tutorial-style pages for beginners, an extensive style

guide for advanced authors, and an alphabetic index helping to choose

the best macros for various kinds of content.

.Sh HISTORY

The

.Nm

CVSweb