HTML br tags are inserted before each line within EX/EE man macros

[gokcehan]

We have a man page for lf that we maintain using man macros. We wrap code snippets and monospace verbatim contents within .EX and .EE macros. It seems that debiman inserts <br/> tags before each line when rendering these contents.

For example, we have the following in the man page:

.PP
The following commands/keybindings are provided by default:
.PP
.EX
    Unix                     Windows
    cmd open &$OPENER "$f"   cmd open &%OPENER% %f%
    map e $$EDITOR "$f"      map e $%EDITOR% %f%
    map i $$PAGER "$f"       map i !%PAGER% %f%
    map w $$SHELL            map w $%SHELL%
.EE

Output of this section is as follows:

<p class="Pp">The following commands/keybindings are provided by default:</p>
<p class="Pp"></p>
<pre><br/>
    Unix                     Windows
<br/>
    cmd open &amp;$OPENER &#34;$f&#34;   cmd open &amp;%OPENER% %f%
<br/>
    map e $$EDITOR &#34;$f&#34;      map e $%EDITOR% %f%
<br/>
    map i $$PAGER &#34;$f&#34;       map i !%PAGER% %f%
<br/>
    map w $$SHELL            map w $%SHELL%
</pre>

The rendered output currently shows up as follows:

When I tried mandoc myself on my machine, no such extra <br/> tags are inserted:

<div class="Pp"></div>
The following commands/keybindings are provided by default:
<div class="Pp"></div>
<pre>
    Unix                          Windows
    cmd open &amp;$OPENER &quot;$f&quot;        cmd open &amp;%OPENER% %f%
    map e $$EDITOR &quot;$f&quot;           map e $%EDITOR% %f%
    map i $$PAGER &quot;$f&quot;            map i !%PAGER% %f%
    map w $$SHELL                 map w $%SHELL%
    cmd doc $$lf -doc | $PAGER    cmd doc !%lf% -doc | %PAGER%
    map &lt;f-1&gt; doc                 map &lt;f-1&gt; doc
</pre>

Is there are reason debiman inserts those extra <br/> tags? If this is working as intended, then is there a workaround to avoid these <br/> tags?

I have looked at other man page hosts and it seems that the arch man page for lf also have these extra <br/> tags. It seems that this behavior is previously reported and it is currently marked as a bug. Arch linux also seems to use mandoc so maybe it could be related.

[stapelberg]

Can you test if you can reproduce this problem directly using mandoc?

If so, please report this issue upstream with mandoc.

I don’t currently have time to look into this in any capacity. Sorry.

[gokcehan]

@stapelberg Extra <br/> tags are not inserted when I run mandoc myself. You can see the output with regular mandoc in my original post. That is executed with mandoc -Ofragment -Thtml lf.1 which I think has the same arguments used in debiman.

It's no problem if you don't have time to look at this. I might take a look at this myself if I find some time.