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PolyglotMan(1)					PolyglotMan(1)

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

SYNOPSIS
       rman [ options ] [ file ]

DESCRIPTION
       PolyglotMan  takes man pages from most of the popular fla-
       vors  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 process-
       ing  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 arbi-
       trarily large subset of [tn]roff, which I did not and will
       not  do, so the results can be off. I did implement a sig-
       nificant 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 writ-
       ten  with  this assumption. For example, if you are trans-
       lating /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 (tra-
       ditional 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 always available from
       ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/ucb/peo-
       ple/phelps/tcltk/rman.tar.Z .

								1

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.

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

       -S|--source    PolyglotMan  tries  to automatically deter-
		      mine whether its input is source or format-
		      ted;  use this  option  to  declare source
		      input.

       -F|--format|--formatted
		      PolyglotMan tries to  automatically  deter-
		      mine whether its input is source or format-
		      ted; 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

								2

PolyglotMan(1)					PolyglotMan(1)

		      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 or  are  always  handled
       correctly with the source.

       -b|--subsections
		      Try to recognize subsection titles in addi-
		      tion 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 head-
		      ers  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.)  Poly-
		      glotMan  usually gets this right even with-
		      out 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 auto-
		      matically 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 deter-
		      mines 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. -->

								3

PolyglotMan(1)					PolyglotMan(1)

       -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 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 con-
       sisting of text-tags pairs, where tag names roughly corre-
       spond 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 them-
       selves (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.

								4

PolyglotMan(1)					PolyglotMan(1)

   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?

   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 subsec-
       tions  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 auto-
       mount -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 modifica-
       tion  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'

								5

PolyglotMan(1)					PolyglotMan(1)

       /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  han-
       dled  very well. Be sure to pass in source for the page to
       recognize tables.

       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 2001/02/16 22:49:38

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