Table of contents


NAME

man2html - convert a UNIX manual page file from nroff/troff -man format to HTML

SYNOPSIS

man2html [ -v HTML=[0|1|2|2-strict|3|3-strict|3.2|4|4-loose|Cougar|Mosaic|Netscape] ] [ input-manpage-file(s) or < input-manpage-file > output-html-file ]

DESCRIPTION

man2html converts UNIX manual page files named on the command line, or provided on stdin, from nroff (1)/ troff (1) -man format to strictly-grammar-conforming HTML.

When input filenames are given, the output files have the same base name, but with extension .html.

You can verify the correctness of the translation by validating the output HTML file with either html-check (1) or html-ncheck (1); neither should produce any warnings or errors whatsoever.

Little attempt is made to prettyprint the output HTML; that job is better left to a separate program, html-pretty (1).

Although some vendors, such as Sun Microsystems, provide clear documentation of how manual pages should be written, many manual page authors ignore those recommendations, and use arbitrary [ nt ] roff markup to achieve the traditional appearance of UNIX manual pages, without actually using the standard -man format commands.

man2html works quite well on Sun manual pages, but may be less successful on manual pages from other sources. In such a case, an alternative may be to use T. A. Phelp's RosettaMan (1), commonly installed as rman (1). That program works on the output of nroff (1), and attempts to guess manual page structure from the horizontal and vertical spacing in order to add HTML markup. When vendor-provided manual pages are available only in preformatted form, as on IBM AIX and SGI IRIX systems, rman (1) may be your only choice. However, when man2html can be used successfully, it can often do a better job than rman (1) because it has a better understanding of the document structure implied [ nt ] roff manual-page markup.


OPTIONS

There is only one option:
-v HTML=[0|1|2|2-strict|3|3-strict|3.2|4|4-loose|Cougar|Mosaic|Netscape]
Define the HTML grammar level to be used for the output
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "...">

declaration. The default, if this option is omitted, is -v HTML=2, to select grammar level 2, which is reasonably-well supported by all current browsers.


HTML GRAMMAR LEVELS

The level 3 grammar has expired; some of its features, particularly the support for markup of mathematics, will appear in a future HTML grammar level.

The version 3.2 grammar is a stopgap, which, despite its higher number, lies approximately between 2 and 3 in features. It was released on 5-Nov-1996 at http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/ in order to provide a stable grammar toward which WWW browser developers could work.

The next version of HTML, code-named Cougar, is under development, and will become version 4.0 when it is finally released. The first draft public release was on 8 July 1997.

There are only four potential differences in the output of man2html for these grammar levels:

Centering is exceedingly rare in manual page files (it is completely absent from all of Sun's standard manual pages), so the default level 2 grammar should almost always be sufficient.

SEE ALSO

amaya (1), arena (1), chimera (1), grail (1), hotjava (1), html-check (1), html-ncheck (1), html-norm (1), html-pretty (1), html-spam (1), html2latex (1), htmlchek (1), jde (1), latex2html (1), lynx (1), netscape (1), nsgmls (1), panorama (1), rman (1), RosettaMan (1), rtf2html (1), sgmlnorm (1), sgmls (1), spam (1), spent (1), texi2html (1), xmosaic (1).

AUTHOR

Nelson H. F. Beebe, Ph.D.
Center for Scientific Computing
University of Utah
Department of Mathematics, 105 JWB
155 S 1400 E RM 233
Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090
USA
Tel: +1 801 581 5254
FAX: +1 801 581 4148
Email: beebe@math.utah.edu, beebe@acm.org, beebe@ieee.org (Internet)
WWW URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe

AVAILABILITY

man2html is freely available; its master distribution can be found at
ftp://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/sgml/

in the file man2html-x.yy.tar.gz where x.yy is the current version. Other distribution formats are usually available in the same location. Several other SGML and HTML tools are available in that same directory.

That site is mirrored to several other Internet archives, so you may also be able to find it elsewhere on the Internet; try searching for the string man2html at one or more of the popular Web search sites, such as

http://altavista.digital.com/
http://www.hotbot.com/
http://www.stpt.com/
http://www.yahoo.com/