db2x_manxml - Make man pages from Man-XML
db2x_manxml
[options] [xml-document]
db2x_manxml converts a Man-XML document into one or more man pages. They
are written in the current directory.
If xml-document is not given, then the document to convert
is read from standard input.
- --encoding=encoding
- Select the character encoding used for the output files. The available
encodings are those of iconv(1). The default encoding is us-ascii.
The XML source may contain characters that are not
representable in the encoding that you select; in this case the program
will bomb out during processing, and you should choose another encoding.
(This is guaranteed not to happen with any Unicode encoding such as
UTF-8, but unfortunately not everyone is able to process Unicode
texts.)
If you are using GNU’s version of iconv(1), you
can affix //TRANSLIT to the end of the encoding name to attempt
transliterations of any unconvertible characters in the output. Beware,
however, that the really inconvertible characters will be turned into
another of those damned question marks. (Aren’t you sick of
this?)
The suffix //TRANSLIT applied to a Unicode encoding —
in particular, utf-8//TRANSLIT — means that the output files are
to remain in Unicode, but markup-level character translations using
utf8trans are still to be done. So in most cases, an
English-language document, converted using
--encoding=utf-8//TRANSLIT will actually end up as a
US-ASCII document, but any untranslatable characters will remain as
UTF-8 without any warning whatsoever. (Note: strictly speaking this is
not “transliteration”.) This method of conversion is a
compromise over strict --encoding=us-ascii processing,
which aborts if any untranslatable characters are encountered.
Note that man pages and Texinfo documents in non-ASCII
encodings (including UTF-8) may not be portable to older
(non-internationalized) systems, which is why the default value for this
option is us-ascii.
To suppress any automatic character mapping or encoding
conversion whatsoever, pass the option
--encoding=utf-8.
- --list-files
- Write a list of all the output files to standard output, in addition to
normal processing.
- --output-dir=dir
- Specify the directory where the output files are placed. The default is
the current working directory.
This option is ignored if the output is to be written to
standard output (triggered by the option --to-stdout).
- --to-stdout
- Write the output to standard output instead of to individual files.
If this option is used even when there are supposed to be
multiple output documents, then everything is concatenated to standard
output. But beware that most other programs will not accept this
concatenated output.
This option is incompatible with --list-files,
obviously.
- --help
- Show brief usage information and exit.
- --version
- Show version and exit.
Some man pages may be referenced under two or more names, instead
of just one. For example, strcpy(3) and strncpy(3) often point
to the same man page which describes the two functions together. Choose one
of the following options to select how such man pages are to be
generated:
- --symlinks
- For each of all the alternate names for a man page, erect symbolic links
to the file that contains the real man page content.
- --solinks
- Generate stub pages (using .so roff requests) for the alternate names,
pointing them to the real man page content.
- --no-links
- Do not make any alternative names available. The man page can only be
referenced under its principal name.
This program uses certain other programs for its operation. If
they are not in their default installed locations, then use the following
options to set their location:
- --utf8trans-program=path,
--utf8trans-map=charmap
- Use the character map charmap with the utf8trans(1) program,
included with docbook2X, found under path.
- --iconv-program=path
- The location of the iconv(1) program, used for encoding
conversions.
The man pages produced should be compatible with most troff implementations and
other tools that process man pages. Some backwards-compatible groff(1)
extensions are used to make the output look nicer.
Steve Cheng <stevecheng@users.sourceforge.net>.
The docbook2X manual (in Texinfo or HTML format) fully describes how to convert
DocBook to man pages and Texinfo.
Up-to-date information about this program can be found at the
docbook2X Web site ⟨http://docbook2x.sourceforge.net/⟩ .
The input to db2x_manxml is defined by the XML DTD present
at dtd/Man-XML in the docbook2X distribution.