path: root/upstream/debian-unstable/man1/rman.1

.TH PolyglotMan 1
.SH "NAME "
PolyglotMan, rman - reverse compile man pages from formatted 
form to a number of source formats: ASCII, roff, TkMan, Tk, 
Sections, HTML, SGML, MIME, LaTeX, LaTeX2e, RTF, POD. 
.SH "SYNOPSIS "
rman [ \fIoptions \fR] [ \fIfile \fR] 
.SH "DESCRIPTION "
Up-to-date instructions can be found at
http://polyglotman.sourceforge.net/rman.html

.PP
\fIPolyglotMan \fR takes man pages from most of the popular flavors 
of UNIX and transforms them into any of a number of text source 
formats. PolyglotMan was formerly known as RosettaMan. The name 
of the binary is still called \fIrman\fR, for scripts that depend 
on that name; mnemonically, just think "reverse man". Previously \fI
PolyglotMan \fR required pages to be formatted by nroff(1) prior 
to its processing. With version 3.0, it \fIprefers [tn]roff source \fR
and usually produces results that are better yet. And source 
processing is the only way to translate tables. Source format 
translation is not as mature as formatted, however, so try formatted 
translation as a backup. 
.PP
In parsing [tn]roff source, one could implement an arbitrarily 
large subset of [tn]roff, which I did not and will not do, so 
the results can be off. I did implement a significant subset 
of those used in man pages, however, including tbl (but not eqn), 
if tests, and general macro definitions, so usually the results 
look great. If they don't, format the page with nroff before 
sending it to PolyglotMan. If PolyglotMan doesn't recognize a 
key macro used by a large class of pages, however, e-mail me 
the source and a uuencoded nroff-formatted page and I'll see 
what I can do. When running PolyglotMan with man page source 
that includes or redirects to other [tn]roff source using the .so (source 
or inclusion) macro, you should be in the parent directory of 
the page, since pages are written with this assumption. For example, 
if you are translating /usr/share/man/man1/ls.1, first cd into /usr/share/man. 
.PP
\fIPolyglotMan \fR accepts man pages from: SunOS, Sun Solaris, 
Hewlett-Packard HP-UX, AT&T System V, OSF/1 aka Digital UNIX, 
DEC Ultrix, SGI IRIX, Linux, FreeBSD, SCO. Source processing 
works for: SunOS, Sun Solaris, Hewlett-Packard HP-UX, AT&T System 
V, OSF/1 aka Digital UNIX, DEC Ultrix. It can produce printable 
ASCII-only (control characters stripped), section headers-only, 
Tk, TkMan, [tn]roff (traditional man page source), XML, HTML, 
MIME, LaTeX, LaTeX2e, RTF, Perl 5 POD. A modular architecture 
permits easy addition of additional output formats. 
.PP
The latest version of PolyglotMan is available from \fI
http://polyglotman.sourceforge.net/ \fR. 
.SH "OPTIONS "
The following options should not be used with any others and 
exit PolyglotMan without processing any input. 
.TP 15
\-h|\-\-help 
Show list of command line options and exit. 
.TP 15
\-v|\-\-version 
Show version number and exit. 
.PP
\fIYou should specify the filter first, as this sets a number 
of parameters, and then specify other options. 
.TP 15
\-f|\-\-filter <ASCII|roff|TkMan|Tk|Sections|HTML|XML|MIME|LaTeX|LaTeX2e|RTF|POD> 
Set the output filter. Defaults to ASCII. 
.TP 15
\-S|\-\-source 
PolyglotMan tries to automatically determine whether its input 
is source or formatted; use this option to declare source input. 
.TP 15
\-F|\-\-format|\-\-formatted 
PolyglotMan tries to automatically determine whether its input 
is source or formatted; use this option to declare formatted 
input. 
.TP 15
\-l|\-\-title \fIprintf-string \fR
In HTML mode this sets the <TITLE> of the man pages, given the 
same parameters as \fI-r \fR. 
.TP 15
\-r|\-\-reference|\-\-manref \fIprintf-string \fR
In HTML and XML modes this sets the URL form by which to retrieve 
other man pages. The string can use two supplied parameters: 
the man page name and its section. (See the Examples section.) 
If the string is null (as if set from a shell by "\-r ''"), `-' 
or `off', then man page references will not be HREFs, just set 
in italics. If your printf supports XPG3 positions specifier, 
this can be quite flexible. 
.TP 15
\-V|\-\-volumes \fI<colon-separated list> \fR
Set the list of valid volumes to check against when looking for 
cross-references to other man pages. Defaults to \fI1:2:3:4:5:6:7:8:9:o:l:n:p \fR(volume 
names can be multicharacter). If an non-whitespace string in 
the page is immediately followed by a left parenthesis, then 
one of the valid volumes, and ends with optional other characters 
and then a right parenthesis--then that string is reported as 
a reference to another manual page. If this \-V string starts 
with an equals sign, then no optional characters are allowed 
between the match to the list of valids and the right parenthesis. (This 
option is needed for SCO UNIX.) 
.PP
The following options apply only when formatted pages are given 
as input. They do not apply to or are always handled correctly with 
the source. 
.TP 15
\-b|\-\-subsections 
Try to recognize subsection titles in addition to section titles. 
This can cause problems on some UNIX flavors. 
.TP 15
\-K|\-\-nobreak 
Indicate manual pages don't have page breaks, so don't look for 
footers and headers around them. (Older nroff \-man macros always 
put in page breaks, but lately some vendors have realized that 
printouts are made through troff(1), whereas nroff \-man is used to 
format pages for reading on screen, and so have eliminated page 
breaks.) \fIPolyglotMan \fR usually gets this right even without 
this flag. 
.TP 15
\-k|\-\-keep 
Keep headers and footers, as a canonical report at the end of 
the page. changeleft 
Move changebars, such as those found in the Tcl/Tk manual pages, 
to the left. --> notaggressive 
\fIDisable \fR aggressive man page parsing. Aggressive manual, 
which is on by default, page parsing elides headers and footers, 
identifies sections and more. --> 
.TP 15
\-n|\-\-name \fIname \fR
Set name of man page (used in roff format). If the filename is 
given in the form " \fIname \fR. \fIsection \fR", the name and 
section are automatically determined. If the page is being parsed 
from [tn]roff source and it has a .TH line, this information 
is extracted from that line. 
.TP 15
\-p|\-\-paragraph 
paragraph mode toggle. The filter determines whether lines should 
be linebroken as they were by nroff, or whether lines should 
be flowed together into paragraphs. Mainly for internal use. 
.TP 15
\-s|section \fI# \fR
Set volume (aka section) number of man page (used in roff format). 
tables 
Turn on aggressive table parsing. --> 
.TP 15
\-t|\-\-tabstops \fI# \fR
For those macros sets that use tabs in place of spaces where 
possible in order to reduce the number of characters used, set 
tabstops every \fI# \fR columns. Defaults to 8. 
.SH "NOTES ON FILTER TYPES "
.SS "ROFF "
Some flavors of UNIX ship man page without [tn]roff source, making 
one's laser printer little more than a laser-powered daisy wheel. 
This filter tries to intuit the original [tn]roff directives, 
which can then be recompiled by [tn]roff. 
.SS "TkMan "
TkMan(1), a hypertext man page browser, uses \fIPolyglotMan \fR 
to show man pages without the (usually) useless headers and footers 
on each page. It also collects section and (optionally) subsection 
heads for direct access from a pulldown menu. TkMan and Tcl/Tk, 
the toolkit in which it's written, are available via anonymous 
ftp from \fIftp://ftp.smli.com/pub/tcl/ \fR
.SS "Tk "
This option outputs the text in a series of Tcl lists consisting 
of text-tags pairs, where tag names roughly correspond to HTML. 
This output can be inserted into a Tk text widget by doing an \fI
eval <textwidget> insert end <text> \fR. This format should be 
relatively easily parsible by other programs that want both the 
text and the tags. See also ASCII. 
.SS "ASCII "
When printed on a line printer, man pages try to produce special 
text effects by overstriking characters with themselves (to produce 
bold) and underscores (underlining). Other text processing software, 
such as text editors, searchers, and indexers, must counteract 
this. The ASCII filter strips away this formatting. Piping nroff 
output through \fIcol \-b \fR also strips away this formatting, 
but it leaves behind unsightly page headers and footers. Also 
see Tk. 
.SS "Sections "
Dumps section and (optionally) subsection titles. This might 
be useful for another program that processes man pages. 
.SS "HTML "
With a simple extension to a HTTP server for Mosaic(1) or other 
World Wide Web browser, \fIPolyglotMan \fR can produce high quality 
HTML on the fly. Several such extensions and pointers to several 
others are included in \fIPolyglotMan \fR's \fIcontrib \fR directory. 
.SS "XML "
This is appoaching the Docbook DTD, but I'm hoping that someone 
with a real interest in this will polish the tags 
generated. Try it to see how close the tags are now. 
.SS "MIME "
MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) as defined by RFC 1563, 
good for consumption by MIME-aware e-mailers or as Emacs (>=19.29) 
enriched documents. 
.SS "LaTeX and LaTeX2e "
Why not? 
.SS "RTF "
Use output on Mac or NeXT or whatever. Maybe take random man 
pages and integrate them better with NeXT's documentation system. 
Maybe NeXT has its own man page macros that do this. 
.SS "PostScript and FrameMaker "
To produce PostScript, use \fIgroff \fR or \fIpsroff \fR. To 
produce FrameMaker MIF, use FrameMaker's builtin filter. In both 
cases you need \fI[tn]roff \fR source, so if you only have a 
formatted version of the manual page, use \fIPolyglotMan \fR's 
roff filter first. 
.SH "EXAMPLES "
To convert the \fIformatted \fR man page named \fIls.1 \fR back 
into [tn]roff source form: 
.PP
\fIrman \-f roff /usr/local/man/cat1/ls.1 > /usr/local/man/man1/ls.1 \fR
.br
.PP
Long man pages are often compressed to conserve space (compression 
is especially effective on formatted man pages as many of the 
characters are spaces). As it is a long man page, it probably 
has subsections, which we try to separate out (some macro sets 
don't distinguish subsections well enough for \fIPolyglotMan \fR
to detect them). Let's convert this to LaTeX format: 
.br
.PP
\fIpcat /usr/catman/a_man/cat1/automount.z | rman \-b \-n automount \-s 1 \-f 
latex > automount.man \fR
.br
.PP
Alternatively, \fIman 1 automount | rman \-b \-n automount \-s 1 \-f 
latex > automount.man \fR
.br
.PP
For HTML/Mosaic users, \fIPolyglotMan \fR can, without modification 
of the source code, produce HTML links that point to other HTML 
man pages either pregenerated or generated on the fly. First 
let's assume pregenerated HTML versions of man pages stored in \fI/usr/share/man/html \fR. 
Generate these one-by-one with the following form: 
.br
\fIrman \-f html \-r 'http:/usr/share/man/html/%s.%s.html' /usr/share/man/cat1/ls.1 > /usr/share/man/html/ls.1.html \fR
.br
.PP
If you've extended your HTML client to generate HTML on the fly 
you should use something like: 
.br
\fIrman \-f html \-r 'http:~/bin/man2html?%s:%s' /usr/share/man/cat1/ls.1 \fR
.br
when generating HTML. 
.SH "BUGS/INCOMPATIBILITIES "
\fIPolyglotMan \fR is not perfect in all cases, but it usually 
does a good job, and in any case reduces the problem of converting 
man pages to light editing. 
.PP
Tables in formatted pages, especially H-P's, aren't handled very 
well. Be sure to pass in source for the page to recognize tables. 
.PP
The man pager \fIwoman\fR(1) applies its own idea of formatting 
for man pages, which can confuse \fIPolyglotMan \fR. Bypass \fI
woman \fR by passing the formatted manual page text directly 
into \fIPolyglotMan \fR. 
.PP
The [tn]roff output format uses fB to turn on boldface. If your 
macro set requires .B, you'll have to a postprocess the \fIPolyglotMan \fR
output. 
.SH "SEE ALSO "
\fItkman(1) \fR, \fIxman(1) \fR, \fIman(1) \fR, \fIman(7) \fR
or \fIman(5) \fR depending on your flavor of UNIX 
.SH "AUTHOR "
PolyglotMan 
.br
by Thomas A. Phelps ( \fIphelps@ACM.org \fR) 
.br
developed at the 
.br
University of California, Berkeley 
.br
Computer Science Division 
.PP
Manual page last updated on $Date: 1998/07/13 09:47:28 $