md2ms - Markdown to troff -ms macros
md2ms [ **eqndelim=**xy ] [ file... ]
Md2ms reads the named Markdown input files and converts them into troff(1) input. The troff input generated by md2ms uses macros defined in the ms(7) macro package.
Md2ms recognizes Markdown as defined in the original Daring Fireball syntax guide, augmented with a few extensions from Pandoc's Markdown. They are:
Inline math
: If **eqndelim=**xy is given on the command line, the pair of characters xy is understood to delimit inline eqn(1) input. The text within and including these delimiters is passed verbatim to the output. If y is missing, it is taken to be x; if x is missing, inline math is disabled. Md2ms always outputs an eqn block setting the inline delimiter to xy (or off) when md2ms starts processing an input file, so the user needn't specify it separately for eqn when md2ms is used in a troff pipeline.
Citations
: Words matching the regular expression @[A-Za-z0-9'-]+ are output as refer(1) citations. One can optionally bracket such a word with []. Several citations can also be grouped within a single pair of brackets by separating them from each other with semicolons.
Inline footnotes
: Input text of the form ^[text] is output as ms footnotes. Md2ms additionally defines the number register FN, which is used to keep a running count of the footnotes. The in-text label of a footnote is FN wrapped by the string registers [. and .], which are also used by refer.
Smart punctuation
: Double hyphens and triple hyphens are output as the troff escape sequences for en dashes and em dashes respectively. Typewriter single and double quotes are output as the troff sequences for their curved counterparts. Multiple spaces are converted into line breaks: if two spaces (or a newline) follow each sentence of input, troff can typeset end-of-sentence spacing better. Multiple spaces at the end of a line still cause, as per Markdown, a hard line break (.br.)
Intra-word emphasis
: Underscores in the middle of a word won't trigger emphasis, but asterisks still will.
Md2ms passes troff requests and escapes through verbatim, just as Markdown does with HTML. This is the preferred means of customizing md2ms output: redefine the troff macros and string and number registers it uses at the start of a file. Nonempty lines immediately following troff requests are also not processed, so troff preprocessor commands can be embedded in your Markdown source.
Troff and Markdown are very different languages, so a 1:1 mapping between them is impossible. See the extensive BUGS section for what is lost and altered in translation.
eqn(1), refer(1), troff(1), ms(7)
J. Gruber, ``Markdown Syntax Documentation'', Daring Fireball.
J. MacFarlane, ``Pandoc User's Guide'', section Pandoc's
markdown.
Ms only defines nesting for the .IP macro. Md2ms uses it to implement lists, so they are the only block elements that can be safely nested. To implement strong emphasis, md2ms uses the macro .BI to format spans wrapped in triple asterisks or underscores.
Ms has no concept of hyperlinks, so they are implemented as footnotes. Autolinked URIs and e-mail addresses are simply output in a constant-width font.
Ms does not define a horizontal rule macro, so md2ms does it instead:
.de HR
.br
.tl ''* * *''
..
Troff only supports embedding PostScript images. Md2ms uses the .BP macro in mpictures(7) to do this. It contains no provisions for handling alt text, which is ignored.
Markdown makes no distinction between numbered and unnumbered headings, or indented and left-blocked paragraphs. Md2ms opts to output every heading with the .NH macro and every paragraph with the .PP macro.
A backslash followed by an asterisk in the input is ambiguous, as it both escapes emphasis in Markdown and begins the interpolation of a string register in troff. In md2ms, it only performs the former function.
Ordered lists do not have their ordinals computed on the go: they are output as they are in the source. Likewise, unordered lists use as bullet points the characters they were invoked with in the source.
Md2ms is implemented as a single-pass formatter without lookahead, so reference-style images and links and setext-style headers cannot be supported. There is also no graceful backtracking from unclosed span elements.
Md2ms is an awk(1) script, so the command line parsing rules described on its manual page also apply here. As such, take care not to give md2ms arguments that resemble options or variable assignments not defined above.
Md2ms is unlikely to parse edge cases identically to any other Markdown implementation.