let commands that show changesets use templates. mechanism is same as hgweb templates. old show_changeset code is still used for now if no template given, because it is faster than template code when verbose or debug. simple template can be given on command line using -t, --template. example: hg log -t '{author|person}\n' complex template can be put in template map file, given on command line using --map-file. we give two example map files: map-log.compact prints 3 lines of output for every change. map-log.verbose prints exact same output as default "hg log -v". map files are searched where user says, then in template path as backup. example: hg log --map-file map-log.compact defaults can be set in hgrc with ui.logtemplate and ui.logmap.

Mercurial's documentation is currently kept in ASCIIDOC format, which
is a simple plain text format that's easy to read and edit. It's also
convertible to a variety of other formats including standard UNIX man
page format and HTML.

To do this, you'll need to install ASCIIDOC:

 http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/

To generate the man page:

 asciidoc -d manpage -b docbook hg.1.txt
 xmlto man hg.1.xml

To display:

 groff -mandoc -Tascii hg.1 | more

To create the html page (without stylesheets):

 asciidoc -b html hg.1.txt