mandoc (formerly mdocml) — UNIX manpage compiler — current version 1.14.5 (March 10, 2019)

The mandoc UNIX manpage compiler toolset

mandoc is a suite of tools compiling mdoc, the roff macro language of choice for BSD manual pages, and man, the predominant historical language for UNIX manuals. It is small, ISO C, ISC-licensed, and quite fast. The main component of the toolset is the mandoc utility program, based on the libmandoc validating compiler, to format output for UTF-8 and ASCII UNIX terminals, HTML 5, PostScript, and PDF.

mandoc has predominantly been developed on OpenBSD and is both an OpenBSD and a BSD.lv project. We strive to support all interested free operating systems, in particular FreeBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly, illumos, Minix 3, and both GNU- and musl-based Linux distributions, as well as all systems running the pkgsrc portable package build system. To support mandoc development, consider donating to the OpenBSD foundation.

News

• March 10, 2019: Version 1.14.5 was released with improvements to tbl(7) output, HTML rendering, low-level roff(7) handling and with many bugfixes. For details, see the release notes.
• December 23, 2018: The GNU troff project released groff-1.22.4 after four years of development. If you use groff in parallel to mandoc, consider upgrading. Groff-1.22.4 contains many incremental improvements, including several that enhance compatibility with recent mandoc.
• September 22, 2018: Ingo Schwarze gave a talk about man.cgi(8) and LibreSSL during EuroBSDCon.
• August 8, 2018: Version 1.14.4 was released with improvements in ASCII and HTML output and with many bugfixes.
• June 8, 2018: Ingo Schwarze gave a talk about mandoc during BSDCan.
• February 21, 2017: Version 1.14.1 was released, removing the dependency on SQLite without loss of functionality.
• January 18, 2017: manpages.debian.org was redeployed by Michael Stapelberg using mandoc as the HTML generation engine.

Documentation and help

• For users: mandoc(1) — man(1) — apropos(1) — man.conf(5) — makewhatis(8) — man.cgi(8) — mandocd(8) — catman(8) — soelim(1) — demandoc(1)
• For authors: mdoc(7) & extended documentation — man(7) — roff(7) — mandoc_char(7) — tbl(7) — eqn(7) — Practical UNIX manuals
• For programmers: mandoc(3) — mandoc_escape(3) — mandoc_malloc(3) — mchars_alloc(3) — mandoc.db(5) — OpenBSD porting guide — mandoc_headers(3) — mandoc_html(3) — mansearch(3) — man.cgi(3) — tbl(3) — man.options(1) — TODO list
• Commented documentation index — Online manual page portals: OpenBSD — Debian – Arch – Void Linux
• Contact the mandoc developers, for example for bug reports or for questions.

Availability and installation

• Systems already including mandoc: No manual installation is required on these systems.
• Newest release tarball — archive of release tarballs — copyright and license — instructions for manual installation
• CVS web interface — Anonymous CVS access

Related information

• release notes — development history — porting history — ChangeLog — commented history index
• Publications and media coverage concerning mandoc
• History of UNIX manpages
• pod2mdoc — a utility to convert perlpod(1) documents to mdoc(7)
• texi2mdoc — a utility to convert GNU Texinfo documents to mdoc(7)
• docbook2mdoc — an experimental utility to convert documents from the commercial OASIS DocBook format to mdoc(7)
• debiman — static website generator for manual page web servers, using mandoc as the HTML generation engine
• CVSweb — the CGI software behind the CVS web interface listed above
• Additional web links

Copyright © 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 Kristaps Dzonsons, © 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 Ingo Schwarze, $Date: 2019/11/08 16:02:56 $
This server is running httpd on OpenBSD in the NYC*BUG rack sponsored and hosted by New York Internet. Thanks for all that!