NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

By default, mandoc reads mdoc(7) or man(7) text from stdin, implying -m andoc and produces -T ascii output.

The arguments are as follows:

-m format

Input format. See Sx Input Formats for available formats. Defaults to -m andoc

-O option

Comma-separated output options.

-T output

Output format. See Sx Output Formats for available formats. Defaults to -T ascii

-V

Print version and exit.

-W level

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 -W fatal -W all is an alias for -W warning See Sx EXIT STATUS and Sx DIAGNOSTICS for details.

The special option -W stop 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 -W error , 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.

Input Formats

A third option, -m andoc which is also the default, determines encoding on-the-fly: if the first non-comment macro is ‘or ’ ‘ ’ the mdoc(7) parser is used; otherwise, the man(7) parser is used.

If multiple files are specified with -m andoc each has its file-type determined this way. If multiple files are specified and -m doc or -m an is specified, then this format is used exclusively.

Output Formats

-T ascii

Produce 7-bit ASCII output. This is the default. See Sx ASCII Output .

-T html

Produce strict CSS1/HTML-4.01 output. See Sx HTML Output .

-T lint

Parse only: produce no output. Implies -W warning

-T locale

Encode output using the current locale. See Sx Locale Output .

-T man

Produce man(7) format output. See Sx Man Output .

-T pdf

Produce PDF output. See Sx PDF Output .

-T ps

Produce PostScript output. See Sx PostScript Output .

-T tree

Produce an indented parse tree.

-T utf8

Encode output in the UTF-8 multi-byte format. See Sx UTF-8 Output .

-T xhtml

Produce strict CSS1/XHTML-1.0 output. See Sx XHTML Output .

If multiple input files are specified, these will be processed by the corresponding filter in-order.

ASCII Output

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_char7 are rendered best-effort in an ASCII equivalent. If no equivalent is found, ‘?’ is used instead.

Output width is limited to 78 visible columns unless literal input lines exceed this limit.

The following -O arguments are accepted:

indent = indent

The left margin for normal text is set to indent blank characters instead of the default of five for mdoc(7) and seven for man(7). Increasing this is not recommended; it may result in degraded formatting, for example overfull lines or ugly line breaks.

width = width

The output width is set to width which will normalise to ≥60.

HTML Output

The example.style.css file documents style-sheet classes available for customising output. If a style-sheet is not specified with -O style -T html 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:

fragment

Omit the ⟨!DOCTYPE⟩ declaration and the ⟨html⟩ ⟨head⟩ and ⟨body⟩ elements and only emit the subtree below the ⟨body⟩ element. The style argument will be ignored. This is useful when embedding manual content within existing documents.

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 ‘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.

Locale Output

Man Output

If mdoc(7) is passed as input, it is translated into man(7). If the input format is man(7), the input is copied to the output, expanding any roff(7) ‘so’ requests. The parser is also run, and as usual, the -W level controls which Sx DIAGNOSTICS are displayed before copying the input to the output.

PDF Output

PostScript Output

Special characters are rendered as in Sx 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.

UTF-8 Output

XHTML Output

See Sx HTML Output for details; beyond generating XHTML tags instead of HTML tags, these output modes are identical.

EXIT STATUS

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 -W warning was specified.

3

At least one parsing error occurred, but no fatal error, and -W error or -W warning 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 -T lint output mode implies -W warning

EXAMPLES

$ 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

Convert a modern mdoc(7) manual to the older man(7) format, for use on systems lacking an mdoc(7) parser:

$ mandoc -Tman foo.mdoc > foo.man

DIAGNOSTICS

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 .

Messages of the warning and error levels are hidden unless their level, or a lower level, is requested using a -W option or -T lint 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.

COMPATIBILITY

ASCII Compatibility

• Unrenderable unicode codepoints specified with ‘\[uNNNN]’ escapes are printed as ‘?’ in mandoc. In GNU troff, these raise an error.
• The ‘

  ’
  and
  ‘
  ’
  macros of
  mdoc(7)
  
  in
  -T ascii
  
  
  are synonyms, as are -filled and -ragged.
  
  In historic GNU troff, the
  ‘mdoc(7)
  
  ’
  macro does not underline when scoped under an
  ‘
  
  ’
  in the FILES section.
  This behaves correctly in
  .
  
  A list or display following the
  ‘
  

  mdoc(7)

  ’ macro in -T ascii does not assert a prior vertical break, just as it doesn't with ‘

HTML/XHTML Compatibility

• The ‘\fP’ escape will revert the font to the previous ‘\f’ escape, not to the last rendered decoration, which is now dictated by CSS instead of hard-coded. It also will not span past the current scope, for the same reason. Note that in Sx ASCII Output mode, this will work fine.
• The mdoc(7) ‘

  ’ and ‘

  ’ list types render similarly (no break following overreached left-hand side) due to the expressive constraints of HTML.

  The

  man(7) ‘IP’ and ‘TP’ lists render similarly.

SEE ALSO

AUTHORS

CAVEATS

Nesting elements within next-line element scopes of -m an such as ‘br’ within an empty ‘B’ will confuse -T html and -T xhtml 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.

Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

Input Formats

Output Formats

ASCII Output

HTML Output

Locale Output

Man Output

PDF Output

PostScript Output

UTF-8 Output

XHTML Output

EXIT STATUS

EXAMPLES

DIAGNOSTICS

COMPATIBILITY

ASCII Compatibility

mdoc(7)

HTML/XHTML Compatibility

SEE ALSO

AUTHORS

CAVEATS