| docbook-to-man(1) | General Commands Manual | docbook-to-man(1) |
docbook-to-man — convert DocBook SGML into roff -man macros
docbook-to-man [source.sgml] [>] [destination.1]
The docbook-to-man tool is a batch converter that transforms UNIX-style manpages from the DocBook SGML DTD into nroff/troff -man macros.
docbook-to-man is the shell command that runs the low-level components to translate a single DocBook SGML document instance (whose document element is <RefEntry>) into pretty-much vanilla -man macros, with tables rendered in tbl.
This is not the original version by Fred Dalrymple, but one with the ANS Modifications by David Bolen (db3l@ans.net).
This manual page and some small changes are by W. Borgert debacle@debian.org for Debian GNU/Linux. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts.
If you want to use tabs in your manpage you should use <programlisting>, <literal> or <screen> and invoke docbook-to-man with INSTANT_OPT set to a tab character. Be aware that multiple tabs will be collapsed into one.
When you want to collapse white space into one, you should invoke docbook-to-man with INSTANT_OPT set to a space character.
Special characters like \, ' or . will not be interpreted if you set INSTANT_OPT to a space or tab character.
If the variable INSTANT_OPT is not set, the instant(1) is called with the parameter -d by docbook-to-man. If you don't want this, e.g. if you want to use some special characters literally in your SGML file, you can set INSTANT_OPT to just a space character:
INSTANT_OPT=" " docbook-to-man src.sgml > dst.1
Note: The better way to use special characters like ^ or > is to write them in the SGML way, i.e. ⁁ or >.
Copyright (c) 1996 X Consortium
Copyright (c) 1996 Dalrymple Consulting
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