mandoc/mandoc.1 - diff

Return to mandoc.1 CVS log

Up to [cvsweb.bsd.lv] / mandoc

Diff for /mandoc/mandoc.1 between version 1.201 and 1.220

version 1.201, 2017/06/17 23:07:00

version 1.220, 2017/11/10 23:32:40

Line 75 and for the

.Xr man 7

.Ic \&TH

macro.

This can also be used to perform style checks according to the

conventions of one operating system while running on a different

operating system; see

.Sx Style messages

for details.

.It Fl K Ar encoding

Specify the input encoding.

The supported

Line 151 to be reported on the standard error output and to aff

Line 146 to be reported on the standard error output and to aff

The

.Ar level

can be

.Cm base ,

.Cm style ,

.Cm warning ,

.Cm error ,

.Cm unsupp ;

.Cm unsupp .

The

.Cm base

level automatically derives the operating system from the contents of the

.Ic \&Os

macro, from the

.Fl Ios

command line option, or from the

.Xr uname 3

return value.

The levels

.Cm openbsd

and

.Cm netbsd

are variants of

.Cm base

that bypass autodetection and request validation of base system

conventions for a particular operating system.

The level

.Cm all

is an alias for

.Cm style .

.Cm base .

By default,

.Nm

is silent.

Line 224 See

Line 238 See

.It Fl T Cm lint

Parse only: produce no output.

Implies

.Fl W Cm style .

.Fl W Cm all

and redirects parser messages, which usually appear

on standard error output, to standard output.

.It Fl T Cm locale

Encode output using the current locale.

This is the default.

Line 299 and seven for

Line 315 and seven for

.Xr man 7 .

Increasing this is not recommended; it may result in degraded formatting,

for example overfull lines or ugly line breaks.

.It Cm mdoc

Format

.Xr man 7

input files in

.Xr mdoc 7

output style.

Specifically, this suppresses the two additional blank lines near the

top and the bottom of each page, and it implies

.Fl O Cm indent Ns =5 .

One useful application is for checking that

.Fl T Cm man

output formats in the same way as the

.Xr mdoc 7

source it was generated from.

.It Cm width Ns = Ns Ar width

The output width is set to

.Ar width .

Line 596 option:

Line 626 option:

.Pp

.Bl -tag -width Ds -compact

.It 0

No style suggestions, warnings or errors occurred, or those that

No base system convention violations, style suggestions, warnings,

did were ignored because they were lower than the requested

or errors occurred, or those that did were ignored because they

were lower than the requested

.Ar level .

.It 1

At least one style suggestion occurred, but no warning or error, and

At least one base system convention violation or style suggestion

occurred, but no warning or error, and

.Fl W Cm base

.Fl W Cm style

was specified.

.It 2

At least one warning occurred, but no error, and

.Fl W Cm warning

or a lower

.Fl W Cm style

.Ar level

was specified.

was requested.

.It 3

At least one parsing error occurred,

but no unsupported feature was encountered, and

Line 636 to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or

Line 670 to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or

Note that selecting

.Fl T Cm lint

output mode implies

.Fl W Cm style .

.Fl W Cm all .

.Sh EXAMPLES

To page manuals to the terminal:

.Pp

Line 669 parser:

Line 703 parser:

Messages displayed by

.Nm

follow this format:

.Bd -ragged -offset indent

.Nm :

.Ar file : Ns Ar line : Ns Ar column : level : message : macro args

.Pq Ar os

.Ed

.Pp

.D1 Nm Ns : Ar file : Ns Ar line : Ns Ar column : level : message : macro args

.Pp

Line and column numbers start at 1.

Both are omitted for messages referring to an input file as a whole.

Macro names and arguments are omitted where meaningless.

The

.Ar os

operating system specifier is omitted for messages that are relevant

for all operating systems.

Fatal messages about invalid command line arguments

or operating system errors, for example when memory is exhausted,

may also omit the

Line 694 so using GNU troff instead of

Line 735 so using GNU troff instead of

.Nm

to process the file may be preferable.

.It Cm error

An input file contains invalid syntax that cannot be safely interpreted.

Indicates a risk of information loss or severe misformatting,

By discarding part of the input or inserting missing tokens,

in most cases caused by serious syntax errors.

the parser is able to continue, and the error does not prevent

generation of formatted output, but typically, preparing that

output involves information loss, broken document structure

or unintended formatting, no matter whether

.Nm

or GNU troff is used.

In many cases, the output of

.Nm

and GNU troff is identical, but in some,

.Nm

is more resilient than GNU troff with respect to malformed input.

.Pp

Non-existent or unreadable input files are also reported on the

.Cm error

level.

In that case, the parser cannot even be started and no output

is produced from those input files.

.It Cm warning

An input file uses obsolete, discouraged or non-portable syntax.

Indicates a risk that the information shown or its formatting

All the same, the meaning of the input is unambiguous and a correct

may mismatch the author's intent in minor ways.

rendering can be produced.

Additionally, syntax errors are classified at least as warnings,

Documents causing warnings may render poorly when using other

even if they do not usually cause misformatting.

formatting tools instead of

.Nm .

.It Cm style

An input file uses dubious or discouraged style.

This is not a complaint about the syntax, and probably neither

Line 732 so it may occasionally issue bogus suggestions.

Line 754 so it may occasionally issue bogus suggestions.

Please use your good judgement to decide whether any particular

.Cm style

suggestion really justifies a change to the input file.

.It Cm base

A convention used in the base system of a specific operating system

is not adhered to.

These are not markup mistakes, and neither the quality of formatting

nor portability are in danger.

Messages of the

.Cm base

level are printed with the more intuitive

.Cm style

.Ar level

tag.

.El

.Pp

Messages of the

.Cm base ,

.Cm style ,

.Cm warning ,

.Cm error ,

Line 746 are hidden unless their level, or a lower level, is re

Line 780 are hidden unless their level, or a lower level, is re

option or

.Fl T Cm lint

output mode.

.Ss Style messages

.Pp

As indicated below, some style checks are only performed if a

As indicated below, all

specific operating system name occurs in the arguments of the

.Cm base

and some

.Cm style

checks are only performed if a specific operating system name occurs

in the arguments of the

.Fl W

command line option, of the

.Ic \&Os

macro, of the

.Fl Ios

Line 756 command line option, or, if neither are present, in th

Line 796 command line option, or, if neither are present, in th

of the

.Xr uname 3

function.

.Ss Conventions for base system manuals

.Bl -ohang

.It Sy "Mdocdate found"

.Pq mdoc , Nx

Line 778 macro does not use CVS

Line 819 macro does not use CVS

keyword substitution, but using it is conventionally expected in the

.Ox

base system.

.It Sy "unknown architecture"

.Pq mdoc , Ox , Nx

The third argument of the

.Ic \&Dt

macro does not match any of the architectures this operating system

is running on.

.It Sy "operating system explicitly specified"

.Pq mdoc , Ox , Nx

The

.Ic \&Os

macro has an argument.

In the base system, it is conventionally left blank.

.It Sy "RCS id missing"

.Pq Ox , Nx

The manual page lacks the comment line with the RCS identifier

generated by CVS

.Ic OpenBSD

.Ic NetBSD

keyword substitution as conventionally used in these operating systems.

.It Sy "referenced manual not found"

.Pq mdoc

.Ic \&Xr

macro references a manual page that is not found in the base system.

The path to look for base system manuals is configurable at compile

time and defaults to

.Pa /usr/share/man : /usr/X11R6/man .

.El

.Ss Style suggestions

.Bl -ohang

.It Sy "legacy man(7) date format"

.Pq mdoc

The

Line 791 Consider using the conventional

Line 863 Consider using the conventional

date format

.Dq "Month dd, yyyy"

instead.

.It Sy "RCS id missing"

.It Sy "lower case character in document title"

.Pq Ox , Nx

.Pq mdoc , man

The manual page lacks the comment line with the RCS identifier

The title is still used as given in the

generated by CVS

.Ic \&Dt

.Ic OpenBSD

.Ic NetBSD

.Ic \&TH

keyword substitution as conventionally used in these operating systems.

macro.

.It Sy "duplicate RCS id"

A single manual page contains two copies of the RCS identifier for

the same operating system.

Consider deleting the later instance and moving the first one up

to the top of the page.

.It Sy "possible typo in section name"

.Pq mdoc

Fuzzy string matching revealed that the argument of an

.Ic \&Sh

macro is similar, but not identical to a standard section name.

.It Sy "unterminated quoted argument"

.Pq roff

Macro arguments can be enclosed in double quote characters

such that space characters and macro names contained in the quoted

argument need not be escaped.

The closing quote of the last argument of a macro can be omitted.

However, omitting it is not recommended because it makes the code

harder to read.

.It Sy "useless macro"

.Pq mdoc

Line 839 list contains two consecutive

Line 923 list contains two consecutive

entries describing the same

.Ic \&Er

number.

.It Sy "description line ends with a full stop"

.It Sy "trailing delimiter"

.Pq mdoc

Do not use punctuation at the end of an

The last argument of an

.Ic \&Nd

.Ic \&Ex , \&Fo , \&Nd , \&Nm , \&Os , \&Sh , \&Ss , \&St ,

block.

.Ic \&Sx

macro ends with a trailing delimiter.

This is usually bad style and often indicates typos.

Most likely, the delimiter can be removed.

.It Sy "no blank before trailing delimiter"

.Pq mdoc

The last argument of a macro that supports trailing delimiter

arguments is longer than one byte and ends with a trailing delimiter.

Consider inserting a blank such that the delimiter becomes a separate

argument, thus moving it out of the scope of the macro.

.It Sy "fill mode already enabled, skipping"

.Pq man

.Ic \&fi

request occurs even though the document is still in fill mode,

or already switched back to fill mode.

It has no effect.

.It Sy "fill mode already disabled, skipping"

.Pq man

.Ic \&nf

request occurs even though the document already switched to no-fill mode

and did not switch back to fill mode yet.

It has no effect.

.It Sy "function name without markup"

.Pq mdoc

A word followed by an empty pair of parentheses occurs on a text line.

Line 858 Consider using an

Line 960 Consider using an

.Ic \&Xr

macro.

.It Sy "whitespace at end of input line"

.Pq mdoc , man , roff

Whitespace at the end of input lines is almost never semantically

significant \(em but in the odd case where it might be, it is

extremely confusing when reviewing and maintaining documents.

.It Sy "bad comment style"

.Pq roff

Comment lines start with a dot, a backslash, and a double-quote character.

The

.Nm

utility treats the line as a comment line even without the backslash,

but leaving out the backslash might not be portable.

.El

.Ss Warnings related to the document prologue

.Bl -ohang

Line 873 macro before the first non-prologue macro.

Line 987 macro before the first non-prologue macro.

There is no

.Ic \&TH

macro, or it has no arguments.

.It Sy "lower case character in document title"

.Pq mdoc , man

The title is still used as given in the

.Ic \&Dt

.Ic \&TH

macro.

.It Sy "missing manual section, using \(dq\(dq"

.Pq mdoc , man

Line 915 The date given in a

Line 1022 The date given in a

.Ic \&TH

macro does not follow the conventional format.

.It Sy "date in the future, using it anyway"

.Pq mdoc , man

The date given in a

.Ic \&Dd

.Ic \&TH

macro is more than a day ahead of the current system

.Xr time 3 .

.It Sy "missing Os macro, using \(dq\(dq"

.Pq mdoc

The default or current system is not shown in this case.

.It Sy "duplicate prologue macro"

.Pq mdoc

One of the prologue macros occurs more than once.

The last instance overrides all previous ones.

.It Sy "late prologue macro"

.Pq mdoc

Line 929 A

Line 1040 A

.Ic \&Os

macro occurs after some non-prologue macro, but still takes effect.

.It Sy "skipping late title macro"

.Pq mdoc

The

.Ic \&Dt

macro appears after the first non-prologue macro.

Traditional formatters cannot handle this because

they write the page header before parsing the document body.

Even though this technical restriction does not apply to

.Nm ,

traditional semantics is preserved.

The late macro is discarded including its arguments.

.It Sy "prologue macros out of order"

.Pq mdoc

The prologue macros are not given in the conventional order

Line 1031 The same standard section title occurs more than once.

Line 1131 The same standard section title occurs more than once.

.Pq mdoc

A standard section header occurs in a section of the manual

where it normally isn't useful.

.It Sy "cross reference to self"

.Pq mdoc

.Ic \&Xr

macro refers to a name and section matching the section of the present

manual page and a name mentioned in an

.Ic \&Nm

macro in the NAME or SYNOPSIS section, or in an

.Ic \&Fn

.Ic \&Fo

macro in the SYNOPSIS.

Consider using

.Ic \&Nm

.Ic \&Fn

instead of

.Ic \&Xr .

.It Sy "unusual Xr order"

.Pq mdoc

In the SEE ALSO section, an

Line 1117 The paragraph macro is moved after the end of the list

Line 1235 The paragraph macro is moved after the end of the list

.Pq mdoc

An input line begins with an

.Ic \&Ns

macro.

macro, or the next argument after an

.Ic \&Ns

macro is an isolated closing delimiter.

The macro is ignored.

.It Sy "blocks badly nested"

.Pq mdoc

Line 1158 list block contains text or macros before the first

Line 1278 list block contains text or macros before the first

.Ic \&It

macro.

The offending children are moved before the beginning of the list.

.It Sy "fill mode already enabled, skipping"

.It Sy "first macro on line"

.Pq man

Inside a

.Ic \&Bl Fl column

.Ic \&fi

list, a

request occurs even though the document is still in fill mode,

.Ic \&Ta

or already switched back to fill mode.

macro occurs as the first macro on a line, which is not portable.

It has no effect.

.It Sy "fill mode already disabled, skipping"

.Pq man

.Ic \&nf

request occurs even though the document already switched to no-fill mode

and did not switch back to fill mode yet.

It has no effect.

.It Sy "line scope broken"

.Pq man

While parsing the next-line scope of the previous macro,

Line 1225 A

Line 1337 A

.Ic \&Bl ,

.Ic \&D1 ,

.Ic \&Dl ,

.Ic \&MT ,

.Ic \&RS ,

.Ic \&UR

Line 1302 list, an

Line 1415 list, an

.Ic \&It

block is empty.

An empty list item is shown.

.It Sy "missing argument, using next line"

.Pq mdoc

.Ic \&It

macro in a

.Ic \&Bd Fl column

list has no arguments.

While

.Nm

uses the text or macros of the following line, if any, for the cell,

other formatters may misformat the list.

.It Sy "missing font type, using \efR"

.Pq mdoc

Line 1360 An empty pair of square brackets is shown.

Line 1484 An empty pair of square brackets is shown.

.It Sy "missing resource identifier, using \(dq\(dq"

.Pq man

The

.Ic \&MT

.Ic \&UR

macro is invoked without any argument.

An empty pair of angle brackets is shown.

Line 1371 An empty box is inserted.

Line 1497 An empty box is inserted.

.El

.Ss "Warnings related to bad macro arguments"

.Bl -ohang

.It Sy "unterminated quoted argument"

.Pq roff

Macro arguments can be enclosed in double quote characters

such that space characters and macro names contained in the quoted

argument need not be escaped.

The closing quote of the last argument of a macro can be omitted.

However, omitting it is not recommended because it makes the code

harder to read.

.It Sy "duplicate argument"

.Pq mdoc

Line 1520 As an implementation dependent choice, tab characters

Line 1638 As an implementation dependent choice, tab characters

are passed through to the formatters in any case.

Given that the text before the tab character will be filled,

it is hard to predict which tab stop position the tab will advance to.

.It Sy "whitespace at end of input line"

.Pq mdoc , man , roff

Whitespace at the end of input lines is almost never semantically

significant \(em but in the odd case where it might be, it is

extremely confusing when reviewing and maintaining documents.

.It Sy "new sentence, new line"

.Pq mdoc

A new sentence starts in the middle of a text line.

Start it on a new input line to help formatters produce correct spacing.

.It Sy "bad comment style"

.Pq roff

Comment lines start with a dot, a backslash, and a double-quote character.

The

.Nm

utility treats the line as a comment line even without the backslash,

but leaving out the backslash might not be portable.

.It Sy "invalid escape sequence"

.Pq roff

An escape sequence has an invalid opening argument delimiter, lacks the

Line 1642 and any remaining cells stay empty.

Line 1748 and any remaining cells stay empty.

.El

.Ss "Errors related to roff, mdoc, and man code"

.Bl -ohang

.It Sy "duplicate prologue macro"

.Pq mdoc

One of the prologue macros occurs more than once.

The last instance overrides all previous ones.

.It Sy "skipping late title macro"

.Pq mdoc

The

.Ic \&Dt

macro appears after the first non-prologue macro.

Traditional formatters cannot handle this because

they write the page header before parsing the document body.

Even though this technical restriction does not apply to

.Nm ,

traditional semantics is preserved.

The late macro is discarded including its arguments.

.It Sy "input stack limit exceeded, infinite loop?"

.Pq roff

Explicit recursion limits are implemented for the following features,

Line 1712 An

Line 1833 An

.Xr mdoc 7

block closing macro, a

.Xr man 7

.Ic \&RE

.Ic \&ME , \&RE

.Ic \&UE

macro, an

Line 1746 At the end of the document, an explicit

Line 1867 At the end of the document, an explicit

block, a

.Xr man 7

next-line scope or

.Ic \&RS

.Ic \&MT , \&RS

.Ic \&UR

block, an equation, table, or

Line 1918 A macro or request is invoked with too many arguments:

Line 2039 A macro or request is invoked with too many arguments:

.Bl -dash -offset 2n -width 2n -compact

.It

.Ic \&Fo ,

.Ic \&MT ,

.Ic \&PD ,

.Ic \&RS ,

.Ic \&UR ,

CVSweb