DESCRIPTION
The
mandoc utility formats
UNIX manual pages for display. The arguments are as follows:
-
-mformat
-
Input format. See Input Formats for available formats. Defaults to -mandoc.
-
-Ooption
-
Comma-separated output options.
-
-Toutput
-
Output format. See Output Formats for available formats. Defaults to -Tascii.
-
-V
-
Print version and exit.
-
-Wlevel
-
Specify the minimum message level to be reported on the standard error output and to affect the exit status. The level can be warning, error, or fatal. The default is -Wfatal; -Wall is an alias for -Wwarning. See EXIT STATUS and DIAGNOSTICS for details.
The special option -Wstop tells mandoc to exit after parsing a file that causes warnings or errors of at least the requested level. No formatted output will be produced from that file. If both a level and stop are requested, they can be joined with a comma, for example -Werror,stop.
-
file
-
Read input from zero or more files. If unspecified, reads from stdin. If multiple files are specified, mandoc will halt with the first failed parse.
By default, mandoc reads mdoc(7) or man(7) text from stdin, implying -mandoc, and produces -Tascii output.
Input Formats
The
mandoc utility accepts
mdoc(7) and
man(7) input with
-mdoc and
-man, respectively. The
mdoc(7) format is
strongly recommended;
man(7) should only be used for legacy manuals.
A third option, -mandoc, which is also the default, determines encoding on-the-fly: if the first non-comment macro is ‘Dd' or ‘Dt', the mdoc(7) parser is used; otherwise, the man(7) parser is used.
If multiple files are specified with -mandoc, each has its file-type determined this way. If multiple files are specified and -mdoc or -man is specified, then this format is used exclusively.
Output Formats
The
mandoc utility accepts the following
-T arguments, which correspond to output modes:
-
-Tascii
-
Produce 7-bit ASCII output. This is the default. See ASCII Output.
-
-Thtml
-
Produce strict CSS1/HTML-4.01 output. See HTML Output.
-
-Tlint
-
Parse only: produce no output. Implies -Wwarning.
-
-Tpdf
-
Produce PDF output. See PDF Output.
-
-Tps
-
Produce PostScript output. See PostScript Output.
-
-Ttree
-
Produce an indented parse tree.
-
-Txhtml
-
Produce strict CSS1/XHTML-1.0 output. See XHTML Output.
If multiple input files are specified, these will be processed by the corresponding filter in-order.
ASCII Output
Output produced by
-Tascii, which is the default, is rendered in standard 7-bit ASCII documented in
ascii(7).
Font styles are applied by using back-spaced encoding such that an underlined character ‘c' is rendered as ‘_\[bs]c', where ‘\[bs]' is the back-space character number 8. Emboldened characters are rendered as ‘c\[bs]c'.
The special characters documented in mandoc_char(7) are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent.
Output width is limited to 78 visible columns unless literal input lines exceed this limit.
The following -O arguments are accepted:
-
width=width
-
The output width is set to width, which will normalise to ≥60.
HTML Output
Output produced by
-Thtml conforms to HTML-4.01 strict.
The example.style.css file documents style-sheet classes available for customising output. If a style-sheet is not specified with -Ostyle, -Thtml defaults to simple output readable in any graphical or text-based web browser.
Special characters are rendered in decimal-encoded UTF-8.
The following -O arguments are accepted:
-
includes=fmt
-
The string fmt, for example, ../src/%I.html, is used as a template for linked header files (usually via the ‘In' macro). Instances of ‘%I' are replaced with the include filename. The default is not to present a hyperlink.
-
man=fmt
-
The string fmt, for example, ../html%S/%N.%S.html, is used as a template for linked manuals (usually via the ‘Xr' macro). Instances of ‘%N' and ‘%S' are replaced with the linked manual's name and section, respectively. If no section is included, section 1 is assumed. The default is not to present a hyperlink.
-
style=style.css
-
The file style.css is used for an external style-sheet. This must be a valid absolute or relative URI.
PostScript Output
PostScript “Adobe-3.0” Level-2 pages may be generated by
-Tps. Output pages default to letter sized and are rendered in the Times font family, 11-point. Margins are calculated as 1/9 the page length and width. Line-height is 1.4m.
Special characters are rendered as in ASCII Output.
The following -O arguments are accepted:
-
paper=name
-
The paper size name may be one of a3, a4, a5, legal, or letter. You may also manually specify dimensions as NNxNN, width by height in millimetres. If an unknown value is encountered, letter is used.
PDF Output
PDF-1.1 output may be generated by
-Tpdf. See
PostScript Output for
-O arguments and defaults.
XHTML Output
Output produced by
-Txhtml conforms to XHTML-1.0 strict.
See HTML Output for details; beyond generating XHTML tags instead of HTML tags, these output modes are identical.
EXIT STATUS
The
mandoc utility exits with one of the following values, controlled by the message
level associated with the
-W option:
-
0
-
No warnings or errors occurred, or those that did were ignored because they were lower than the requested level.
-
2
-
At least one warning occurred, but no error, and -Wwarning was specified.
-
3
-
At least one parsing error occurred, but no fatal error, and -Werror or -Wwarning was specified.
-
4
-
A fatal parsing error occurred.
-
5
-
Invalid command line arguments were specified. No input files have been read.
-
6
-
An operating system error occurred, for example memory exhaustion or an error accessing input files. Such errors cause mandoc to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file.
Note that selecting -Tlint output mode implies -Wwarning.
EXAMPLES
To page manuals to the terminal:
$ mandoc -Wall,stop mandoc.1 2>&1 | less
$ mandoc mandoc.1 mdoc.3 mdoc.7 | less
To produce HTML manuals with style.css as the style-sheet:
$ mandoc -Thtml -Ostyle=style.css mdoc.7 > mdoc.7.html
To check over a large set of manuals:
$ mandoc -Tlint `find /usr/src -name \*\.[1-9]`
To produce a series of PostScript manuals for A4 paper:
$ mandoc -Tps -Opaper=a4 mdoc.7 man.7 > manuals.ps
DIAGNOSTICS
Standard error messages reporting parsing errors are prefixed by
file:line:column: level:
where the fields have the following meanings:
-
file
-
The name of the input file causing the message.
-
line
-
The line number in that input file. Line numbering starts at 1.
-
column
-
The column number in that input file. Column numbering starts at 1. If the issue is caused by a word, the column number usually points to the first character of the word.
-
level
-
The message level, printed in capital letters.
Message levels have the following meanings:
-
fatal
-
The parser is unable to parse a given input file at all. No formatted output is produced from that input file.
-
error
-
An input file contains syntax that cannot be safely interpreted, either because it is invalid or because mandoc does not implement it yet. By discarding part of the input or inserting missing tokens, 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.
-
warning
-
An input file uses obsolete, discouraged or non-portable syntax. All the same, the meaning of the input is unambiguous and a correct rendering can be produced. Documents causing warnings may render poorly when using other formatting tools instead of mandoc.
Messages of the warning and error levels are hidden unless their level, or a lower level, is requested using a -W option or -Tlint output mode.
The mandoc utility may also print messages related to invalid command line arguments or operating system errors, for example when memory is exhausted or input files cannot be read. Such messages do not carry the prefix described above.
CAVEATS
In
-Thtml and
-Txhtml, the maximum size of an element attribute is determined by
BUFSIZ, which is usually 1024 bytes. Be aware of this when setting long link formats such as
-Ostyle=
really/long/link.
Nesting elements within next-line element scopes of -man, such as ‘br' within an empty ‘B', will confuse -Thtml and -Txhtml and cause them to forget the formatting of the prior next-line scope.
The ‘'' control character is an alias for the standard macro control character and does not emit a line-break as stipulated in GNU troff.