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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!newshost.telstra.net!act.news.telstra.net!psgrain!reuter.cse.ogi.edu!news.ssd.intel.com!chnews!itnews.sc.intel.com!news.sprintlink.net!news.chattanooga.net!tarush!tom From: tom@tarush.chattanooga.net (Tom Rush) Subject: Re: [Q] How to create MAN pages? X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Organization: Rush Co. Message-ID: <DntqrJ.AFt@tarush.chattanooga.net> References: <4h511u$528@news.neocom.ca> Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 02:26:07 GMT Lines: 62 Harold Smorodin (harold@neocom.ca) wrote: : All, : Could someone describe the step by step process of creating a man page : and / or point me to some documentation? : I am running FBSD 2.1R and have not been able to find any details on : the topic of creating man pages in any of the documentation. See the manpages for mdoc and mdoc.samples. : I also have the following questions: : 1. What directory should the source text for man pages be placed in : the FreeBSD system? Is there a convention for this? /usr/{share,local,X11R6}/man/man[1-8]; Sections 1-8 are for: 1. user commands 2. system calls 3. library functions 4. device drivers 5. file formats 6. games 7. misc 8. system maint. : 2. Is there a template or program that I should use to create the : source text? I am thinking in terms of I enter the text and the : program or template supplies the formatting codes. A very basic one is in /usr/share/misc/mdoc.template. : 3. If I must use a text editor such as vi to manually embed : formatting codes into the source text, where do I find a list of these : codes and their meanings? See manpages mentioned earlier. : 4. Is the man program a formatter/viewer, or just a viewer? If the : latter, what formatting program do I use to produce the formatted man : page? It is both, but also see 'man catman' to format mass quantities of man pages. : 5. What directory should the formatted man page be placed in? Is : there a convention for this? You should create directories /usr/{share,local,X11R6}/man/cat[1-8] for the formatted pages. (Owner man, group bin, mode 755.) : 6. Can the man page text be stored in compressed format? If yes, : which compression program do I use? Does the man program decompress : it automatically upon access? Yes, gzip, yes. BSD make, when used with the system 'include' files (e.g. /usr/share/mk/bsd.prog.mk), handles compression and installation quite nicely when you do a 'make install' for your application. : I would greatly appreciate any clues to get me started. : -- : Harold -- Tom Rush tom@tarush.chattanooga.net