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

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)