axper / hitman

Manpage to HTML converter

This project is discontinued.

See man2archwiki instead.

Usage

./hitman.py <manpage-file>

Example:

./hitman.py /usr/share/man/man1/intro.1.gz

The output will be written to result.html in current directory.

Used groff file specifications

• groff(7)
• groff_me(7)
• groff_man(7)
• man(7)
• groff info

List of similar projects

• man2html: text output with everything in black monospace font
• man2web: same as man2html
• roffit: can't handle more complex pages with groff commands
• man -H: can't properly format gcc(1)

Escapes

• Escapes begin with slash
• Followed by: [xyz] for vairables and escape 'xyz' for constants
• 1-character escape, except '[' and '(': \x
• 2-character escape, usually special characters: (xy or *(xy
• Arguments are enclosed in single quotes
• Backslash (\) at the end - continue line
• Three single-quotes at beginning of line is a comment
• Escape followed by newline means ignore the newline and continue current line
• This program will misbehave during HTML escaping if an escape code is < or >

Requests

• Just the control char by itself on the line is ignored

TODO

• synopsis and example sections via pre, especially disdvi()
• add .TP handling via dl/dt/dd; dd css
• do not rely on .TH being first command (ppmtouil(1))
• escapes:
  • handle '\ ' - shouldn't split if space space is escaped
  • _main rainbow rdx(1)
  • italic right after bold shouldn't close chvt(1)
• add multiple arguments support and delete log file
• make FontParser static class
• html elements class
• add separate logger for other functions
• decide something about ending newlines
• add kwargs to write() in State and possibly some other places
• add output filename option