1 ************************************************************************
2 * Official mandoc TODO.
3 * $Id: TODO,v 1.1.1.1 2013/04/03 14:46:49 christos Exp $
4 ************************************************************************
6 ************************************************************************
8 ************************************************************************
10 - ".\}" on its own line gets translated to bare ".\&"
11 which forces pset() into man(7)
12 and then triggers an unknown macro error
13 reported by naddy@ Sun, 3 Jul 2011 21:52:24 +0200
15 ************************************************************************
17 ************************************************************************
19 - tbl(7): Horizontal and vertical lines are formatted badly:
20 With the box option, there is too much white space at the end of cells.
21 Horizontal lines from "=" lines are a bit too long.
22 yuri dot pankov at gmail dot com Thu, 14 Apr 2011 05:45:26 +0400
24 ************************************************************************
26 ************************************************************************
28 --- missing roff features ----------------------------------------------
30 - The pod2man preamble wants \h'...' with quoted numerical arguments,
31 see for example AUTHORS in MooseX::Getopt.3p, p5-MooseX-Getopt.
32 reported by Andreas Voegele <mail at andreasvoegele dot com>
33 Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:34:47 +0100 on ports@
37 should cause an extra space to be raised.
39 - .ad (adjust margins)
40 .ad l -- adjust left margin only (flush left)
41 .ad r -- adjust right margin only (flush right)
42 .ad c -- center text on line
43 .ad b -- adjust both margins (alias: .ad n)
44 .na -- temporarily disable adjustment without changing the mode
45 .ad -- re-enable adjustment without changing the mode
46 Adjustment mode is ignored while in no-fill mode (.nf).
48 - .it (line traps) occur in mysql(1), yasm_arch(7)
49 generated by DocBook XSL Stylesheets v1.71.1 <http://docbook.sf.net/>
50 reported by brad@ Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:48:18 -0500
52 - .ns (no-space mode) occurs in xine-config(1)
53 reported by brad@ Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:45:23 -0500
55 - xloadimage(1) wants .ti (temporary indent), rep by naddy@
57 - .ta (tab settings) occurs in ircbug(1) and probably gnats(1)
58 reported by brad@ Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:50:51 -0500
60 - \c (interrupted text) occurs in chat(8)
62 - using undefined strings or macros defines them to be empty
63 wl@ Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:37:01 +0000
65 --- missing mdoc features ----------------------------------------------
67 - fix bad block nesting involving multiple identical explicit blocks
68 see the OpenBSD mdoc_macro.c 1.47 commit message
70 - .Bl -column .Xo support is missing
72 restore .Xr and .Dv to
73 lib/libc/compat-43/sigvec.3
75 lib/libc/sys/sigaction.2
77 - edge case: decide how to deal with blk_full bad nesting, e.g.
78 .Sh .Nm .Bk .Nm .Ek .Sh found by jmc@ in ssh-keygen(1)
79 from jmc@ Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:10:32 +0100
81 - \\ is now implemented correctly
82 * when defining strings and macros using .ds and .de
83 * when parsing roff(7) and man(7) macro arguments
84 It does not yet work in mdoc(7) macro arguments
85 because libmdoc does not yet use mandoc_getarg().
86 Also check what happens in plain text, it must be identical to \e.
88 - .Bd -filled should not be the same as .Bd -ragged, but align both
89 the left and right margin. In groff, it is implemented in terms
90 of .ad b, which we don't have either. Found in cksum(1).
92 - implement blank `Bl -column', such as
97 - explicitly disallow nested `Bl -column', which would clobber internal
98 flags defined for struct mdoc_macro
100 - In .Bl -column .It, the end of the line probably has to be regarded
101 as an implicit .Ta, if there could be one, see the following mildly
102 ugly code from login.conf(5):
103 .Bl -column minpasswordlen program xetcxmotd
104 .It path Ta path Ta value of Dv _PATH_DEFPATH
107 reported by Michal Mazurek <akfaew at jasminek dot net>
108 via jmc@ Thu, 7 Apr 2011 16:00:53 +0059
110 - inside `.Bl -column' phrases, punctuation is handled like normal
111 text, e.g. `.Bl -column .It Fl x . Ta ...' should give "-x -."
113 - inside `.Bl -column' phrases, TERMP_IGNDELIM handling by `Pf'
114 is not safe, e.g. `.Bl -column .It Pf a b .' gives "ab."
115 but should give "ab ."
117 - set a meaningful default if no `Bl' list type is assigned
119 - have a blank `It' head for `Bl -tag' not puke
121 - prohibit `Nm' from having non-text HEAD children
122 (e.g., NetBSD mDNSShared/dns-sd.1)
123 (mdoc_html.c and mdoc_term.c `Nm' handlers can be slightly simplified)
125 - When there is free text in the SYNOPSIS and that free text contains
126 the .Nm macro, groff somehow understands to treat the .Nm as an in-line
127 macro, while mandoc treats it as a block macro and breaks the line.
128 No idea how the logic for distinguishing in-line and block instances
129 should be, needs investigation.
130 uqs@ Thu, 2 Jun 2011 11:03:51 +0200
131 uqs@ Thu, 2 Jun 2011 11:33:35 +0200
133 --- missing man features -----------------------------------------------
135 - groff an-ext.tmac macros (.UR, .UE) occur in xine(5)
136 reported by brad@ Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:45:23 -0500
138 - -T[x]html doesn't stipulate non-collapsing spaces in literal mode
140 --- missing tbl features -----------------------------------------------
142 - implement basic non-parametric .de to support e.g. sox(1)
143 reported by naddy@ Sat, 16 Oct 2010 23:51:57 +0200
144 *** sox(1) still doesn't work, tbl(1) errors need investigation
146 - allow standalone `.' to be interpreted as an end-of-layout
147 delimiter instead of being thrown away as a no-op roff line
148 reported by Yuri Pankov, Wed 18 May 2011 11:34:59 CEST
150 --- missing misc features ----------------------------------------------
152 - clean up escape sequence handling, creating three classes:
153 (1) fully implemented, or parsed and ignored without loss of content
154 (2) unimplemented, potentially causing loss of content
155 or serious mangling of formatting (e.g. \n) -> ERROR
156 see textproc/mgdiff(1) for nice examples
157 (3) undefined, just output the character -> perhaps WARNING
159 - The \t escape sequence is the same as a literal tab, see for example
160 the ASCII table in hexdump(1) where
161 .Bl -column \&000_nu \&001_so \&002_st \&003_et \&004_eo
162 .It \&000\ nul\t001\ soh\t002\ stx\t003\ etx\t004\ eot\t005\ enq
164 000 nul 001 soh 002 stx 003 etx 004 eot 005 enq
165 and the example in oldrdist(1)
167 - look at pages generated from reStructeredText, e.g. devel/mercurial hg(1)
168 These are a weird mixture of man(7) and custom autogenerated low-level
169 roff stuff. Figure out to what extent we can cope.
170 For details, see http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html
171 noted by stsp@ Sat, 24 Apr 2010 09:17:55 +0200
172 reminded by nicm@ Mon, 3 May 2010 09:52:41 +0100
174 - check compatibility with Plan9:
175 http://swtch.com/usr/local/plan9/tmac/tmac.an
176 http://swtch.com/plan9port/man/man7/man.html
177 "Anthony J. Bentley" <anthonyjbentley@gmail.com> 28 Dec 2010 21:58:40 -0700
179 ************************************************************************
180 * formatting issues: ugly output
181 ************************************************************************
183 - a column list with blank `Ta' cells triggers a spurrious
184 start-with-whitespace printing of a newline
186 - double quotes inside double quotes are escaped by doubling them
187 implement this in mdoc(7), too
188 so far, we only have it in roff(7) and man(7)
189 reminded by millert@ Thu, 09 Dec 2010 17:29:52 -0500
191 - perl(1) SYNOPSIS looks bad; reported by deraadt@
192 1) man(7) seems to need SYNOPSIS .Nm blocks, too
195 .It Em Authentication<tab>Key Length
196 ought to render "Key Length" with emphasis, too,
197 see OpenBSD iked.conf(5).
198 reported again Nicolas Joly via wiz@ Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:20:00 +0200
200 - empty phrases in .Bl column produce too few blanks
201 try e.g. .Bl -column It Ta Ta
202 reported by millert Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:13:46 -0400
204 - .%T can have trailing punctuation. Currently, it puts the trailing
205 punctuation into a trailing MDOC_TEXT element inside its own scope.
206 That element should rather be outside its scope, such that the
207 punctuation does not get underlines. This is not trivial to
208 implement because .%T then needs some features of in_line_eoln() -
209 slurp all arguments into one single text element - and one feature
210 of in_line() - put trailing punctuation out of scope.
211 Found in mount_nfs(8) and exports(5), search for "Appendix".
213 - in enclosures, mandoc sometimes fancies a bogus end of sentence
214 reminded by jmc@ Thu, 23 Sep 2010 18:13:39 +0059
216 ************************************************************************
217 * formatting issues: gratuitous differences
218 ************************************************************************
220 - .Rv (and probably .Ex) print different text if an `Nm' has been named
221 or not (run a manual without `Nm blah' to see this). I'm not sure
222 that this exists in the wild, but it's still an error.
224 - In .Bl -bullet, the groff bullet is "+\b+\bo\bo", the mandoc bullet
226 see for example OpenBSD ksh(1)
228 - The characters "|" and "\*(Ba" should never be bold,
229 not even in the middle of a word, e.g. ".Cm b\*(Bac" in
230 "mknod [-m mode] name b|c major minor"
233 - A bogus .Pp between two .It must not produce a double blank line,
234 see between -R and -r in OpenBSD rm(1), before "update" in mount(8),
235 or in DIAGNOSTICS in init(8), or before "is always true" in ksh(1).
236 The same happens with .Pp just before .El, see bgpd.conf(5).
237 Also have `It' complain if `Pp' is invoked at certain times (not
240 - .Pp between two .It in .Bl -column should produce one,
241 not two blank lines, see e.g. login.conf(5).
242 reported by jmc@ Sun, 17 Apr 2011 14:04:58 +0059
243 reported again by sthen@ Wed, 18 Jan 2012 02:09:39 +0000 (UTC)
245 - If the *first* line after .It is .Pp, break the line right after
246 the tag, do not pad with space characters before breaking.
247 See the description of the a, c, and i commands in sed(1).
249 - If the first line after .It is .D1, do not assert a blank line
250 in between, see for example tmux(1).
251 reported by nicm@ 13 Jan 2011 00:18:57 +0000
254 should be "NetBSD 1.0A", not "NetBSD 1.0a",
255 see OpenBSD ccdconfig(8).
257 - In .Bl -tag, if a tag exceeds the right margin and must be continued
258 on the next line, it must be indented by -width, not width+1;
259 see "rule block|pass" in OpenBSD ifconfig(8).
261 - When the -width string contains macros, the macros must be rendered
262 before measuring the width, for example
263 .Bl -tag -width ".Dv message"
264 in magic(5), located in src/usr.bin/file, is the same
265 as -width 7n, not -width 11n.
266 The same applies to .Bl -column column widths;
267 reported again by Nicolas Joly Thu, 1 Mar 2012 13:41:26 +0100 via wiz@ 5 Mar
269 - The \& zero-width character counts as output.
270 That is, when it is alone on a line between two .Pp,
271 we want three blank lines, not two as in mandoc.
273 - When .Fn arguments exceed one output line, all but the first
274 should be indented, see e.g. rpc(3);
275 reported by jmc@ on discuss@ Fri, 29 Oct 2010 13:48:33 +0100
276 reported again by Nicolas Joly via wiz@ Sun, 18 Sep 2011 18:24:40 +0200
277 Also, we don't want to break the line within the argument of:
280 - .Ns should work when called at the end of an input line, see
281 the following code in vi(1):
284 .Cm a Ns Op Cm ppend Ns
287 The input text is appended after the specified line.
289 - Header lines of excessive length:
290 Port OpenBSD man_term.c rev. 1.25 to mdoc_term.c
291 and document it in mdoc(7) and man(7) COMPATIBILITY
292 found while talking to Chris Bennett
294 - In man(7), the sequence
296 one line of regular text
298 should not produce two blank lines before the .SH,
299 see for example named-checkconf(8).
301 - In man(7), the sequence
306 should not produce any blank lines between the header and the text,
307 see for example rsync(1).
308 Reported by naddy@ Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:45:42 +0200
310 - In man(7), the sequence
315 should produce one, not four blank lines between the regular text
316 and the tag, see for example rsync(1).
321 should produce one, not two blank lines in between, and
327 should produce one, not three blank lines.
328 Reported by naddy@ Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:45:42 +0200
330 - trailing whitespace must be ignored even when followed by a font escape,
334 operate in batch mode
337 ************************************************************************
338 * error reporting issues
339 ************************************************************************
341 - .TP directly followed by .RS gives an assertion.
343 ************************************************************************
345 ************************************************************************
347 Several areas can be cleaned up to make mandoc even faster. These are
349 - improve hashing mechanism for macros (quite important: performance)
351 - improve hashing mechanism for characters (not as important)
353 - the PDF file is HUGE: this can be reduced by using relative offsets
355 - instead of re-initialising the roff predefined-strings set before each
356 parse, create a read-only version the first time and copy it
358 ************************************************************************
360 ************************************************************************
362 - We use the input line number at several places to distinguish
363 same-line from different-line input. That plainly doesn't work
364 with user-defined macros, leading to random breakage.
366 - Find better ways to prevent endless loops
367 in roff(7) macro and string expansion.
369 - Finish cleanup of date handling.
370 Decide which formats should be recognized where.
371 Update both mdoc(7) and man(7) documentation.
372 Triggered by Tim van der Molen Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:30:45 +0100