Provided by: rman_3.2-9_amd64 bug

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.

SYNOPSIS

       rman [ options ] [ file ]

DESCRIPTION

       Up-to-date instructions can be found at http://polyglotman.sourceforge.net/rman.html

       PolyglotMan  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  rman,  for  scripts  that  depend  on  that  name;
       mnemonically,  just  think  "reverse  man".  Previously  PolyglotMan  required pages to be
       formatted by nroff(1) prior to its processing.  With  version  3.0,  it  prefers  [tn]roff
       source 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.

       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.

       PolyglotMan   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.

       The latest version of PolyglotMan is available from http://polyglotman.sourceforge.net/ .

OPTIONS

       The  following  options  should  not  be used with any others and exit PolyglotMan without
       processing any input.

       -h|--help      Show list of command line options and exit.

       -v|--version   Show version number and exit.

       You should specify the filter first, as this sets a number of parameters, and then specify
       other options.

       -f|--filter <ASCII|roff|TkMan|Tk|Sections|HTML|XML|MIME|LaTeX|LaTeX2e|RTF|POD>
                      Set the output filter. Defaults to ASCII.

       -S|--source    PolyglotMan tries to automatically determine whether its input is source or
                      formatted; use this option to declare source input.

       -F|--format|--formatted
                      PolyglotMan tries to automatically determine whether its input is source or
                      formatted; use this option to declare formatted input.

       -l|--title printf-string
                      In  HTML  mode  this  sets  the  <TITLE>  of  the man pages, given the same
                      parameters as -r .

       -r|--reference|--manref printf-string
                      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.

       -V|--volumes <colon-separated list>
                      Set  the  list  of  valid  volumes to check against when looking for cross-
                      references  to  other  man  pages.  Defaults  to  1:2:3:4:5:6:7:8:9:o:l:n:p
                      (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.)

       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.

       -b|--subsections
                      Try to recognize subsection titles in addition to section titles.  This can
                      cause problems on some UNIX flavors.

       -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.) PolyglotMan  usually gets this right
                      even without this flag.

       -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  Disable   aggressive  man  page  parsing.
                      Aggressive  manual, which is on by default, page parsing elides headers and
                      footers, identifies sections and more. -->

       -n|--name name Set name of man page (used in roff format). If the filename is given in the
                      form " name . section ", 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.

       -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.

       -s|section #   Set  volume (aka section) number of man page (used in roff format).  tables
                      Turn on aggressive table parsing. -->

       -t|--tabstops #
                      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 #
                      columns. Defaults to 8.

NOTES ON FILTER TYPES

   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.

   TkMan
       TkMan(1), a hypertext man page browser, uses PolyglotMan 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
       ftp://ftp.smli.com/pub/tcl/

   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 eval <textwidget> insert end <text> . This format should be relatively  easily
       parsible by other programs that want both the text and the tags. See also ASCII.

   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
       col  -b  also strips away this formatting, but it leaves behind unsightly page headers and
       footers. Also see Tk.

   Sections
       Dumps section and (optionally) subsection titles. This might be useful for another program
       that processes man pages.

   HTML
       With  a  simple  extension to a HTTP server for Mosaic(1) or other World Wide Web browser,
       PolyglotMan  can produce high quality  HTML  on  the  fly.  Several  such  extensions  and
       pointers to several others are included in PolyglotMan 's contrib  directory.

   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.

   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.

   LaTeX and LaTeX2e
       Why not?

   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.

   PostScript and FrameMaker
       To  produce PostScript, use groff  or psroff . To produce FrameMaker MIF, use FrameMaker's
       builtin filter. In both cases you need [tn]roff  source, so if you only have  a  formatted
       version of the manual page, use PolyglotMan 's roff filter first.

EXAMPLES

       To convert the formatted  man page named ls.1  back into [tn]roff source form:

       rman -f roff /usr/local/man/cat1/ls.1 > /usr/local/man/man1/ls.1

       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 PolyglotMan to detect  them).  Let's  convert  this  to  LaTeX
       format:

       pcat   /usr/catman/a_man/cat1/automount.z  |  rman  -b  -n  automount  -s  1  -f  latex  >
       automount.man

       Alternatively, man 1 automount | rman -b -n automount -s 1 -f latex > automount.man

       For HTML/Mosaic users, PolyglotMan  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 /usr/share/man/html .
       Generate these one-by-one with the following form:
       rman   -f   html   -r   'http:/usr/share/man/html/%s.%s.html'  /usr/share/man/cat1/ls.1  >
       /usr/share/man/html/ls.1.html

       If you've extended your HTML client to generate HTML on the fly you should  use  something
       like:
       rman -f html -r 'http:~/bin/man2html?%s:%s' /usr/share/man/cat1/ls.1
       when generating HTML.

BUGS/INCOMPATIBILITIES

       PolyglotMan   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.

       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.

       The man pager woman(1) applies its own idea of formatting for man pages, which can confuse
       PolyglotMan . Bypass woman  by passing  the  formatted  manual  page  text  directly  into
       PolyglotMan .

       The  [tn]roff  output  format  uses fB to turn on boldface. If your macro set requires .B,
       you'll have to a postprocess the PolyglotMan output.

SEE ALSO

       tkman(1) , xman(1) , man(1) , man(7) or man(5)  depending on your flavor of UNIX

AUTHOR

       PolyglotMan
       by Thomas A. Phelps ( phelps@ACM.org )
       developed at the
       University of California, Berkeley
       Computer Science Division

       Manual page last updated on $Date: 1998/07/13 09:47:28 $

                                                                                   PolyglotMan(1)