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 PolyglotMan(1)                                               PolyglotMan(1)




 NAME
      PolyglotMan, rman - reverse compile man pages from formatted form to a
      number of source formats

 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 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 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.

      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), SGML, 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/ .




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 PolyglotMan(1)                                               PolyglotMan(1)




 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.

 <ASCII|roff|TkMan|Tk|Sections|HTML|SGML|MIME|LaTeX|LaTeX2e|RTF|POD>
      -f|--filter    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 SGML 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.)




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 PolyglotMan(1)                                               PolyglotMan(1)




      The following options apply only when formatted pages are given as
      input. They do not apply 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 printout are made through
                     troff, 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



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 PolyglotMan(1)                                               PolyglotMan(1)




      filer tries to intuit the original [tn]roff directives, which can then
      be recompiled by [tn]roff.

    TkMan
      TkMan, a hypertext man page browser, uses PolyglotMan 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
      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. Also see 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 extention to an HTTP server for Mosaic 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.

    SGML
      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.

    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?




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 PolyglotMan(1)                                               PolyglotMan(1)




    RTF
      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.

    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/man/html .
      Generate these one-by-one with the following form:
      rman -f html -r 'http:/usr/man/html/%s.%s.html' /usr/man/cat1/ls.1 >
      /usr/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/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.




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 PolyglotMan(1)                                               PolyglotMan(1)




      The man pager woman  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 $



































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