Ubuntu Manpage: PolyglotMan, rman - reverse compile man pages from formatted form to a number of source

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.

-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.

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)