[Groff] Subject: Re: Building a troffparserRe: Building a troff parser

[Doug McIlroy]

> I'm interested in building a troff parser to extract information from
> manpages (e.g. what do the flags mean when we say `rm -rf *`?).

> does troff have a specification that details troff formatting

The syntax of troff and of the man-pages macros is in

        man 7 groff
        man 7 groff_man
        man 7 groff_mdoc

The markup, however, is not faithfully used. In groff -man, you'll
find boldface specified by .B , \fB, and perhaps .ft B or .ft 3.
And you'll find .I used for names of parameters as well as for  
names of man pages (though parse context will usually resolve       
the ambiguity. groff -mdoc  tries for more precision than man, but I   
suspect is sloppily used because there are so many details to learn.

Doug