This "mandoc" naming of a project that was previously called "mdocml" is terribly confusing.

"mandoc" is the name of a newer troff/nroff macro package for writing man pages which replaced one called "man". (nroff -man versus nroff -mandoc).

The renamed "mandoc" project provides a processor which understands a "mdoc" language, a set of macros used on BSD Unixes. It's not a full processor for the roff language. The mdoc language has macros that resemble mandoc, like .SH, .TH and others.

In the TXR man-page-like reference manual, I'm using real roff macros (some of which output mandoc macros as their target, in the original sense of mandoc).

I don't think these macros could run in under the mandoc system, where you have to use a canned repertoire of macros.

For instance, I have a macro like this.

   .coNP Functions @, boundp @, fboundp and @ mboundp

This parses its arguments. Any word preceded by @, is typeset in a typewriter font, immediately followed by a comma. A word preceded by @ is typeset typewriter, not followed by a comma. Other material is in the regular font.

Another complicated thing:

   .mets (replace-list < list < item-sequence >> [ from <> [ to ]])

IN this syntax "< word" means typeset word as a meta-identifier. "<< word1 word2" means, typeset word as a meta-identifier, immediately juxtaposed with word2 (no whitespace) which is ordinary. >> word1 word2 reverses the relationship, and <> w1 w2 w3 means w1 and w2 are ordinary , surrounding meta-syntax w2 without space.

When you render this with a man reader, the macro puts out angle-bracket notation, exactly like this:

   (replace-list <list> <item-sequence> [<from> [<to>]])

in the paragraphs which describe this, this notation is consistently used. In HTML and PDF output, these angle-bracket notation is replaced by italics.