~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/utopic/rman/utopic

.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 $