remark-man

remark plugin to compile Markdown to man pages.

• Great unicode support
• Name, section, and description detection
• Nested block quotes and lists
• Tables
• and much more

Note!

This plugin is ready for the new parser in remark (micromark, see remarkjs/remark#536). No change is needed: it works exactly the same now as it did before!

Install

npm:

npm install remark-man

Use

Say we have the following file, example.md:

# ls(1) -- list directory contents

## SYNOPSIS

`ls` \[`-ABCFGHLOPRSTUW@abcdefghiklmnopqrstuwx1`] \[*file* *...*]

And our script, example.js, looks as follows:

var vfile = require('to-vfile')
var unified = require('unified')
var markdown = require('remark-parse')
var man = require('remark-man')

unified()
  .use(markdown)
  .use(man)
  .process(vfile.readSync('example.md'), function(err, file) {
    if (err) throw err
    file.extname = '.1'
    vfile.writeSync(file)
  })

Now, running node example and cat example.1 yields:

.TH "LS" "1" "June 2019" "" ""
.SH "NAME"
\fBls\fR - list directory contents
.SH "SYNOPSIS"
.P
\fBls\fR \[lB]\fB-ABCFGHLOPRSTUW@abcdefghiklmnopqrstuwx1\fR\[rB] \[lB]\fIfile\fR \fI...\fR\[rB]

Now, that in my opinion isn’t very readable, but that’s roff/groff/troff. 😉

To properly view that man page, use something like this: man ./example.1.

remark().use(man[, options])

Plugin to compile Markdown to man pages.

options

options.name

Title of the page (string, optional). Is inferred from the main heading (# hello-world(7) sets name to 'hello-world') or from the file’s name (hello-world.1.md sets name to 'hello-world').

options.section

Section of page (number or string, optional). Is inferred from the main heading (# hello-world(7) sets section to 7) or from the file’s name (hello-world.1.md sets section to 1).

options.description

Description of page (string, optional). Is inferred from the main heading (# hello-world(7) -- Two common words sets description to 'Two common words').

options.date

Date of page (number, string, or Date, optional). Given to new Date(date) as date, so when null or undefined, defaults to the current date. Dates are centered in the footer line of the displayed page.

options.version

Version of page (string, optional). Versions are positioned at the left of the footer line of the displayed page (or at the left on even pages and at the right on odd pages if double-sided printing is active).

options.manual

Manual of page (string, optional). Manuals are centered in the header line of the displayed page.

options.commonmark

Parsing mode (boolean, default: false). The default behavior is to prefer the last duplicate definition. Set to true to prefer the first when duplicate definitions are found.

Security

Use of remark-man does not involve rehype (hast) or user content so there are no openings for cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.

Related

• remark-react — Compile to React
• remark-vdom — Compile to VDOM
• remark-html — Compile to HTML
• remark-rehype — Properly transform to HTML

Contribute

See contributing.md in remarkjs/.github for ways to get started. See support.md for ways to get help.

This project has a code of conduct. By interacting with this repository, organization, or community you agree to abide by its terms.

License

MIT © Titus Wormer