*BSD News Article 63393


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From: harold@neocom.ca (Harold Smorodin)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: [Q] How to create MAN pages?
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 20:07:53 GMT
Organization: Neocom Communications
Lines: 37
Message-ID: <4h511u$528@news.neocom.ca>
NNTP-Posting-Host: arn110.neocom.ca
X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.0.82

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. 

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?

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.

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?

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?

5.  What directory should the formatted man page be placed in?  Is
there a convention for this?

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?

I would greatly appreciate any clues to get me started.

--
Harold