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<html>
<head>
<title>PolyglotMan Manual Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Name</h1>
PolyglotMan, rman - reverse compile man pages from formatted form to a number of source formats
<h1>Synopsis</h1>
rman [<i>options</i>] [<var>file</var>]
<h1>Description</h1>
<p><i>PolyglotMan</i> 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 <tt>rman</tt>, for scripts
that depend on that name; mnemonically, just think "reverse man".
Previously <i>PolyglotMan</i> required pages to
be formatted by nroff prior to its processing. With version 3.0, it <i>prefers
[tn]roff source</i> 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.
<p>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 use
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/man/man1/ls.1, first cd into
/usr/man.
<p><i>PolyglotMan</i> accepts <em>formatted</em> man pages from:
<blockquote>SunOS, Sun Solaris, Hewlett-Packard HP-UX,
AT&T System V, OSF/1 aka Digital UNIX, DEC Ultrix, SGI IRIX, Linux,
FreeBSD, SCO.</blockquote>
Man page <em>source</em> processing works for:
<blockquote>SunOS, Sun Solaris, Hewlett-Packard HP-UX,
AT&T System V, OSF/1 aka Digital UNIX, DEC Ultrix.</blockquote>
It can produce
<blockquote>printable ASCII-only (control characters
stripped), section headers-only,
Tk, TkMan, [tn]roff (traditional man page source), partial DocBook XML, HTML, MIME,
LaTeX, LaTeX2e, RTF, Perl 5 POD.</blockquote>
A modular architecture permits easy addition of additional output
formats.</p>
<p>The latest version of PolyglotMan is available via
<a href='http://polyglotman.sourceforge.net/'>http://polyglotman.sourceforge.net/</a>.
<h1>Options</h1>
<p>The following options should not be used with any others and exit PolyglotMan
without processing any input.
<dl>
<dt>-h|--help</dt>
<dd>Show list of command line options and exit.</dd>
<dt>-v|--version</dt>
<dd>Show version number and exit.</dd>
</dl>
<p><em>You should specify the filter first, as this sets a number of parameters,
and then specify other options.</em>
<dl>
<dt>-f|--filter <ASCII|roff|TkMan|Tk|Sections|HTML|MIME|LaTeX|LaTeX2e|RTF|POD></dt>
<dd>Set the output filter. Defaults to ASCII.
<!-- If you are converting
from formatted roff source, it is recommended that you prevent hyphenation by using
groff, making file with the contents ".hpm 20", can reading this in
before the roff source, e.g., groff -Tascii -man <hpm-file> <roff-source>.
-->
</dd>
<dt>-S|--source</dt>
<dd>PolyglotMan tries to automatically determine whether its input is source or formatted;
use this option to declare source input.</dd>
<dt>-F|--format|--formatted</dt>
<dd>PolyglotMan tries to automatically determine whether its input is source or formatted;
use this option to declare formatted input.</dd>
<dt>-l|--title <i>printf-string</i></dt>
<dd>In HTML mode this sets the <TITLE> of the man pages, given the same
parameters as <tt>-r</tt>.</dd>
<dt>-r|--reference|--manref <i>printf-string</i></dt>
<dd>In HTML <!--and SGML--> mode 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.</dd>
<dt>-V|--volumes <i><colon-separated list></i></dt>
<dd>Set the list of valid volumes to check against when looking for
cross-references to other man pages. Defaults to <tt>1:2:3:4:5:6:7:8:9:o:l:n:p</tt>
(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.)
</dd>
</dl>
<p>The following options apply only when formatted pages are given as input.
They do not apply or are always handled correctly with the source.
<dl>
<dt>-b|--subsections</dt>
<dd>Try to recognize subsection titles in addition to section titles.
This can cause problems on some UNIX flavors.</dd>
<dt>-K|--nobreak</dt>
<dd>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 printout are made through troff, whereas
nroff -man is used to format pages for reading on screen, and so have eliminated
page breaks.) <i>PolyglotMan</i> usually gets this right even without this flag.</dd>
<dt>-k|--keep</dt>
<dd>Keep headers and footers, as a canonical report at the end of the page.</dd>
<!-- this done automatically for Tcl/Tk pages; doesn't apply for others
<dt>-c|--changeleft</dt>
<dd>Move changebars, such as those found in the Tcl/Tk manual pages,
to the left.</dd>
-->
<!-- agressive parsing works so well that this option has been removed
<dt>-m|--notaggressive</dt>
<dd><i>Disable</i> aggressive man page parsing. Aggressive manual,
which is on by default, page parsing elides headers and footers,
identifies sections and more.</dd>
-->
<dt>-n|--name <i>name</i></dt>
<dd>Set name of man page (used in roff format).
If the filename is given in the form "<i>name</i>.<i>section</i>", 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.</dd>
<dt>-p|--paragraph</dt>
<dd>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.</dd>
<dt>-s|section <i>#</i></dt>
<dd>Set volume (aka section) number of man page (used in roff format).</dd>
<!-- if in source automatic, if in preformatted really doesn't work
<dt>-T|--tables</dt>
<dd>Turn on aggressive table parsing.</dd>
-->
<dt>-t|--tabstops <i>#</i></dt>
<dd>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 <i>#</i> columns. Defaults to 8.</dd>
</dl>
<h1>Notes on Filter Types</h1>
<h2>ROFF</h2>
<p>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 filer tries to intuit
the original [tn]roff directives, which can then be recompiled by [tn]roff.</p>
<h2>TkMan</h2>
<p>TkMan, a hypertext man page browser, uses <i>PolyglotMan</i> to show
man pages without the (usually) useless headers and footers on each
pages. 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
<tt>ftp://ftp.smli.com/pub/tcl/</tt></p>
<h2>Tk</h2>
<p>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 <tt>eval
<textwidget> insert end <text></tt>. This format should be relatively
easily parsible by other programs that want both the text and the
tags. Also see ASCII.</p>
<h2>ASCII</h2>
<p>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 <tt>col -b</tt> also strips away this formatting,
but it leaves behind unsightly page headers and footers. Also see Tk.</p>
<h2>Sections</h2>
<p>Dumps section and (optionally) subsection titles. This might be useful for
another program that processes man pages.</p>
<h2>HTML</h2>
<p>With a simple extention to an HTTP server for Mosaic or other World Wide Web
browser, <i>PolyglotMan</i> can produce high quality HTML on the fly.
Several such extensions and pointers to several others are included in <i>PolyglotMan</i>'s
<tt>contrib</tt> directory.</p>
<h2>XML</h2>
<p>This is appoaching the Docbook DTD, but I'm hoping that someone that someone
with a real interest in this will polish the tags generated. Try it to see
how close the tags are now.</p>
<p>Improved by Aaron Hawley, but still he notes
<blockquote>
Output requires human intervention to become proper
DocBook format. This is a result of the fundamental
nature of nroff and DocBook xml. One is marked for
formating the other is marked for semantics (defining
what the content is rather then what it should look
like). For instance, italics and bold formatting are
converted to emphasis and command DocBook elements
respectively even though they should probably be marked
up as command, option, literal, arg, option and other
possible DocBook tags.
</blockquote>
</p>
<h2>MIME</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>LaTeX and LaTeX2e</h2>
Why not?
<h2>RTF</h2>
<p>Use output on Mac or NeXT or whatever. Maybe take random man pages
and integrate with NeXT's documentation system better. Maybe NeXT has
own man page macros that do this.</p>
<h2>PostScript and FrameMaker</h2>
<p>To produce PostScript, use <tt>groff</tt> or <tt>psroff</tt>. To produce FrameMaker MIF,
use FrameMaker's built-in filter. In both cases you need <tt>[tn]roff</tt> source,
so if you only have a formatted version of the manual page, use <i>PolyglotMan</i>'s
roff filter first.</p>
<h1>Examples</h1>
<p>To convert the <i>formatted</i> man page named <tt>ls.1</tt> back into
[tn]roff source form:</p>
<p>
<tt>rman -f roff /usr/local/man/cat1/ls.1 > /usr/local/man/man1/ls.1</tt><br>
<p>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 <i>PolyglotMan</i> to detect them). Let's convert
this to LaTeX format:<br>
<p>
<tt>pcat /usr/catman/a_man/cat1/automount.z | rman -b -n automount -s 1 -f latex > automount.man</tt><br>
<p>Alternatively,
<tt>man 1 automount | rman -b -n automount -s 1 -f latex > automount.man</tt><br>
<p>For HTML/Mosaic users, <i>PolyglotMan</i> 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 <i>/usr/man/html</i>.
Generate these one-by-one with the following form:<br>
<tt>rman -f html -r 'http:/usr/man/html/%s.%s.html' /usr/man/cat1/ls.1 > /usr/man/html/ls.1.html</tt><br>
<p>If you've extended your HTML client to generate HTML on the fly you should use
something like:<br>
<tt>rman -f html -r 'http:~/bin/man2html?%s:%s' /usr/man/cat1/ls.1</tt><br>
when generating HTML.</p>
<h1>Bugs/Incompatibilities</h1>
<p><i>PolyglotMan</i> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The man pager <i>woman</i> applies its own idea of formatting for
man pages, which can confuse <i>PolyglotMan</i>. Bypass <i>woman</i>
by passing the formatted manual page text directly into
<i>PolyglotMan</i>.</p>
<p>The [tn]roff output format uses fB to turn on boldface. If your macro set
requires .B, you'll have to a postprocess the <i>PolyglotMan</i> output.</p>
<h1>See Also</h1>
<tt>tkman(1)</tt>, <tt>xman(1)</tt>, <tt>man(1)</tt>, <tt>man(7)</tt> or <tt>man(5)</tt> depending on your flavor of UNIX
<p>GNU groff can now output to HTML.
<h1>Author</h1>
<p>PolyglotMan<br>
Copyright (c) 1994-2003 T.A. Phelps<br />
developed at the<br>
University of California, Berkeley<br />
Computer Science Division
<p>Manual page last updated on $Date: 2005/07/15 15:45:29 $
</body>
</html>
|
