mandoc/mdoc.7 - diff

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Diff for /mandoc/mdoc.7 between version 1.247 and 1.273

version 1.247, 2014/12/31 20:42:31

version 1.273, 2018/12/23 16:55:34

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 444 in the alphabetical

Line 449 in the alphabetical

.It Sx \&Ss Ta subsection header (one line)

.It Sx \&Sx Ta internal cross reference to a section or subsection

.It Sx \&Xr Ta cross reference to another manual page: Ar name section

.It Sx \&Pp , \&Lp Ta start a text paragraph (no arguments)

.It Sx \&Pp Ta start a text paragraph (no arguments)

.El

.Ss Displays and lists

.Bl -column "Brq, Bro, Brc" description

Line 454 in the alphabetical

Line 459 in the alphabetical

.Op Fl compact

.It Sx \&D1 Ta indented display (one line)

.It Sx \&Dl Ta indented literal display (one line)

.It Sx \&Ql Ta in-line literal display: Ql text

.It Sx \&Bl , \&El Ta list block:

.Fl Ar type

.Op Fl width Ar val

Line 470 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:

.Ss Semantic markup for command line utilities

.Bl -column "Brq, Bro, Brc" description

.It Sx \&Nm Ta start a SYNOPSIS block with the name of a utility

.It Sx \&Fl Ta command line options (flags) (>=0 arguments)

Line 484 in the alphabetical

Line 488 in the alphabetical

.It Sx \&Ev Ta environmental variable (>0 arguments)

.It Sx \&Pa Ta file system path (>=0 arguments)

.El

.Ss Semantic markup for function libraries:

.Ss Semantic markup for function libraries

.Bl -column "Brq, Bro, Brc" description

.It Sx \&Lb Ta function library (one argument)

.It Sx \&In Ta include file (one argument)

Line 505 in the alphabetical

Line 509 in the alphabetical

.It Sx \&Er Ta error constant (>0 arguments)

.It Sx \&Ev Ta environmental variable (>0 arguments)

.El

.Ss Various semantic markup:

.Ss Various semantic markup

.Bl -column "Brq, Bro, Brc" description

.It Sx \&An Ta author name (>0 arguments)

.It Sx \&Lk Ta hyperlink: Ar uri Op Ar name

Line 518 in the alphabetical

Line 522 in the alphabetical

.Bl -column "Brq, Bro, Brc" description

.It Sx \&Em Ta italic font or underline (emphasis) (>0 arguments)

.It Sx \&Sy Ta boldface font (symbolic) (>0 arguments)

.It Sx \&Li Ta typewriter font (literal) (>0 arguments)

.It Sx \&No Ta return to roman font (normal) (no arguments)

.It Sx \&Bf , \&Ef Ta font block:

.Op Fl Ar type | Cm \&Em | \&Li | \&Sy

Line 528 in the alphabetical

Line 531 in the alphabetical

.It Sx \&Dq , \&Do , \&Dc Ta enclose in typographic double quotes: Dq text

.It Sx \&Qq , \&Qo , \&Qc Ta enclose in typewriter double quotes: Qq text

.It Sx \&Sq , \&So , \&Sc Ta enclose in single quotes: Sq text

.It Sx \&Ql Ta single-quoted literal text: Ql text

.It Sx \&Pq , \&Po , \&Pc Ta enclose in parentheses: Pq text

.It Sx \&Bq , \&Bo , \&Bc Ta enclose in square brackets: Bq text

.It Sx \&Brq , \&Bro , \&Brc Ta enclose in curly braces: Brq text

Line 671 Examples:

Line 673 Examples:

.Ss \&Ao

Begin a block enclosed by angle brackets.

Does not have any head arguments.

.Pp

This macro is almost never useful.

Examples:

See

.Dl \&.Fl -key= \&Ns \&Ao \&Ar val \&Ac

.Sx \&Aq

.Pp

for more details.

See also

.Sx \&Aq .

.Ss \&Ap

Inserts an apostrophe without any surrounding whitespace.

This is generally used as a grammatical device when referring to the verb

Line 686 Examples:

.Dl \&.Fn execve \&Ap d

.Ss \&Aq

Encloses its arguments in angle brackets.

The only important use case is for email addresses.

See

.Sx \&Mt

for an example.

.Pp

Examples:

Occasionally, it is used for names of characters and keys, for example:

.Dl \&.Fl -key= \&Ns \&Aq \&Ar val

.Bd -literal -offset indent

Press the

\&.Aq escape

key to ...

.Ed

.Pp

.Em Remarks :

For URIs, use

this macro is often abused for rendering URIs, which should instead use

.Sx \&Lk

instead, and

.Sx \&In

for

.Dq #include

directives.

Never wrap

.Sx \&Ar

.Sx \&Aq .

.Pp

Since

.Sx \&Aq

usually renders with non-ASCII characters in non-ASCII output modes,

do not use it where the ASCII characters

.Sq <

and

.Sq >

are required as syntax elements.

Instead, use these characters directly in such cases, combining them

with the macros

.Sx \&Pf ,

.Sx \&Ns ,

.Sx \&Mt ,

.Sx \&Eo

or to note pre-processor

as needed.

.Dq Li #include

statements, which should use

.Sx \&In .

.Pp

See also

.Sx \&Ao .

Line 732 A version of

Line 758 A version of

.At .

.It Cm III

.At III .

.It Cm V[.[1-4]]?

.It Cm V | V.[1-4]

A version of

.At V .

.El

Line 777 The

Line 803 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 848 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 995 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 1209 The

Line 1233 The

.Ar month

is the full English month name, the

.Ar day

is an optionally zero-padded numeral, and the

is an integer number, and the

.Ar year

is the full four-digit year.

.Pp

Line 1239 If no date string is given, the current date is used.

Line 1263 If no date string is given, the current date is used.

.Pp

Examples:

.Dl \&.Dd $\&Mdocdate$

.Dl \&.Dd $\&Mdocdate: July 21 2007$

.Dl \&.Dd $\&Mdocdate: July 2 2018$

.Dl \&.Dd July 21, 2007

.Dl \&.Dd July 2, 2018

.Pp

See also

.Sx \&Dt

Line 1256 Examples:

Line 1280 Examples:

.Dl \&.Dl % mandoc mdoc.7 \e(ba less

.Pp

See also

.Sx \&Ql ,

.Sx \&Bd

.Fl literal ,

and

.Sx \&D1 .

.Ss \&Do

Line 1447 to save the pattern space for subsequent retrieval.

Line 1473 to save the pattern space for subsequent retrieval.

.Ed

.Pp

See also

.Sx \&Bf ,

.Sx \&Li ,

.Sx \&No ,

.Sx \&Ql ,

and

.Sx \&Sy .

.Ss \&En

Line 1620 See also

Line 1645 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 1749 Examples:

Line 1774 Examples:

.Dl \&.Ic alias

.Pp

Note that using

.Sx \&Bd Fl literal

.Sx \&Ql ,

.Sx \&Dl ,

.Sx \&D1

.Sx \&Bd Fl literal

is preferred for displaying code; the

is preferred for displaying code samples; the

.Sx \&Ic

macro is used when referring to specific instructions.

macro is used when referring to an individual command name.

.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 1823 The

Line 1850 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

.Sx \&Ta

macro can be used to delimit cells, and

macro can be used to delimit cells, and portability requires that

.Sx \&Ta

is only recognised as a macro when called by other macros,

is called by other macros: some parsers do not recognize it when

not as the first macro on a line.

it appears as the first macro on a line.

.Pp

Note that quoted strings may span tab-delimited cells on an

.Sx \&It

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

.Sx \&Bl .

Line 1875 Examples:

Line 1914 Examples:

.Dl \&.Lb libz

.Dl \&.Lb libmandoc

.Ss \&Li

Denotes text that should be in a

Request a typewriter (literal) font.

.Li literal

Deprecated because on terminal output devices, this is usually

font mode.

indistinguishable from normal text.

Note that this is a presentation term and should not be used for

For literal displays, use

stylistically decorating technical terms.

.Sx \&Ql Pq in-line ,

.Pp

.Sx \&Dl Pq single line ,

On terminal output devices, this is often indistinguishable from

normal text.

.Sx \&Bd Fl literal Pq multi-line

.Pp

instead.

See also

.Sx \&Bf ,

.Sx \&Em ,

.Sx \&No ,

and

.Sx \&Sy .

.Ss \&Lk

Format a hyperlink.

Its syntax is as follows:

Line 1903 Examples:

Line 1936 Examples:

See also

.Sx \&Mt .

.Ss \&Lp

Synonym for

Deprecated synonym for

.Sx \&Pp .

.Ss \&Ms

Display a mathematical symbol.

Line 1927 Examples:

Line 1960 Examples:

.Dl \&.An Kristaps Dzonsons \&Aq \&Mt kristaps@bsd.lv

.Ss \&Nd

A one line description of the manual's content.

This may only be invoked in the

This is the mandatory last macro of the

.Em SYNOPSIS

.Em NAME

section subsequent the

section and not appropriate for other sections.

.Sx \&Nm

macro.

.Pp

Examples:

.Dl Pf . Sx \&Nd mdoc language reference

Line 2008 Examples:

Line 2039 Examples:

.Pp

See also

.Sx \&Em ,

.Sx \&Li ,

.Sx \&Ql ,

and

.Sx \&Sy .

.Ss \&Ns

Line 2092 It is suggested to leave it unspecified, in which case

Line 2123 It is suggested to leave it unspecified, in which case

.Xr mandoc 1

uses its

.Fl Ios

argument, or, if that isn't specified either,

argument or, if that isn't specified either,

.Fa sysname

and

.Fa release

Line 2154 See also

Line 2185 See also

Close parenthesised context opened by

.Sx \&Po .

.Ss \&Pf

Removes the space between its argument

Removes the space between its argument and the following macro.

.Pq Dq prefix

and the following macro.

Its syntax is as follows:

.Pp

.D1 .Pf Ar prefix macro arguments ...

.Pp

This is equivalent to:

.Pp

.D1 .No Ar prefix No \&Ns Ar macro arguments ...

.D1 .No \e& Ns Ar prefix No \&Ns Ar macro arguments ...

.Pp

The

.Ar prefix

argument is not parsed for macro names or delimiters,

but used verbatim as if it were escaped.

.Pp

Examples:

.Dl ".Pf $ Ar variable_name"

.Dl ".Pf . Ar macro_name"

.Dl ".Pf 0x Ar hex_digits"

.Pp

See also

Line 2201 See also

Line 2236 See also

Close quoted context opened by

.Sx \&Qo .

.Ss \&Ql

Request a literal font and enclose in single quotes.

In-line literal display.

For arguments of three or more characters, formatters other than

This can be used for complete command invocations and for multi-word

.Xr mandoc 1

code examples when an indented display is not desired.

usually omit the quotes on non-terminal output devices.

.Pp

See also

.Sx \&Li

.Sx \&Dl

and

.Sx \&Sq .

.Sx \&Bd

.Fl literal .

.Ss \&Qo

Multi-line version of

.Sx \&Qq .

Line 2259 Examples:

Line 2295 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 2550 The second and last Technical Corrigendum.

Line 2586 The second and last Technical Corrigendum.

.br

This standard is also called

X/Open Portability Guide version 7.

.Pp

.It \-p1003.1-2013

.St -p1003.1-2013

.br

This is the first Technical Corrigendum.

.El

.It Other standards

.Pp

Line 2611 program.

Line 2642 program.

.Ed

.Pp

See also

.Sx \&Bf ,

.Sx \&Em ,

.Sx \&Li ,

.Sx \&No ,

and

.Sx \&No .

.Sx \&Ql .

.Ss \&Ta

Table cell separator in

.Sx \&Bl Fl column

Line 2697 Link to another manual

Line 2727 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

historical manuals.

Its syntax is as follows:

.Pp

.D1 Pf \. Sx \&sp Op Ar height

.Pp

The

.Ar height

argument is a scaling width as described in

.Xr roff 7 .

If unspecified,

.Sx \&sp

asserts a single vertical space.

.Sh MACRO SYNTAX

The syntax of a macro depends on its classification.

In this section,

Line 3016 then the macro accepts an arbitrary number of argument

Line 3022 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

When a macro argument consists of one single input character

Line 3036 For many macros, when the leading arguments are openin

Line 3040 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 3092 renders as:

Line 3098 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 3124 Manually switching the font using the

Line 3130 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 3176 but without any arguments the string

Line 3145 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 3236 can only be called by other macros, but not at the beg

Line 3158 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 3266 The following features are unimplemented in mandoc:

Line 3175 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 3283 but produces large indentations.

Line 3206 but produces large indentations.

.Xr mandoc_char 7 ,

.Xr roff 7 ,

.Xr tbl 7

.Pp

The web page

.Lk http://mandoc.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