man.string.subst.map
rtf

# man.string.subst.map

Specifies a set of string substitutions

## Description

The `man.string.subst.map` parameter contains a map that specifies a set of string substitutions to perform over the entire roff source for each man page, either just before generating final man-page output (that is, before writing man-page files to disk) or, if the value of the `man.charmap.enabled` parameter is non-zero, before applying the roff character map.

You can use `man.string.subst.map` as a “lightweight” character map to perform “essential” substitutions -- that is, substitutions that are always performed, even if the value of the `man.charmap.enabled` parameter is zero. For example, you can use it to replace quotation marks or other special characters that are generated by the DocBook XSL stylesheets for a particular locale setting (as opposed to those characters that are actually in source XML documents), or to replace any special characters that may be automatically generated by a particular customization of the DocBook XSL stylesheets.

Do you not change value of the `man.string.subst.map` parameter unless you are sure what you are doing. First consider adding your string-substitution mappings to either or both of the following parameters:

`man.string.subst.map.local.pre`

  applied before `man.string.subst.map`

`man.string.subst.map.local.post`

  applied after `man.string.subst.map`

By default, both of those parameters contain no string substitutions. They are intended as a means for you to specify your own local string-substitution mappings.

If you remove any of default mappings from the value of the `man.string.subst.map` parameter, you are likely to end up with broken output. And be very careful about adding anything to it; it’s used for doing string substitution over the entire roff source of each man page – it causes target strings to be replaced in roff requests and escapes, not just in the visible contents of the page.

### Contents of the substitution map

The string-substitution map contains one or more `ss:substitution` elements, each of which has two attributes:

oldstring

  string to replace

newstring

  string with which to replace `oldstring`

It may also include XML comments (that is, delimited with "`<!--`" and "`-->`").