From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jun 8 14:19:57 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 120B316A41F for ; Wed, 8 Jun 2005 14:19:57 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Received: from kane.otenet.gr (kane.otenet.gr [195.170.0.95]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AC5F843D48 for ; Wed, 8 Jun 2005 14:19:54 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Received: from orion.daedalusnetworks.priv (aris.bedc.ondsl.gr [62.103.39.226]) by kane.otenet.gr (8.13.4/8.13.4/Debian-1) with SMTP id j58EJq9x018292; Wed, 8 Jun 2005 17:19:53 +0300 Received: from orion.daedalusnetworks.priv (orion [127.0.0.1]) by orion.daedalusnetworks.priv (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id j58EJqeS002780; Wed, 8 Jun 2005 17:19:52 +0300 (EEST) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Received: (from keramida@localhost) by orion.daedalusnetworks.priv (8.13.4/8.13.4/Submit) id j58EJqkU002779; Wed, 8 Jun 2005 17:19:52 +0300 (EEST) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2005 17:19:52 +0300 From: Giorgos Keramidas To: brian.barto@spectrum-health.org Message-ID: <20050608141952.GA2744@orion.daedalusnetworks.priv> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: How to create a man page? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 08 Jun 2005 14:19:57 -0000 On 2005-06-08 09:53, brian.barto@spectrum-health.org wrote: > Hi all. I am writing a program with hopes to submit it for inclusion > to the ports collection. My last step is to include a man page for my > program. Man pages look to be some sort of markup language. What is > the standard way to create a man page? Just typing the text in a plain ASCII file is sufficient. > Is there some sort of wysiwyg or some other program that makes them > easy to create? Not really. Most of the "rules" for writing a well formatted manpage are picked up by osmosis; by reading existing manpages and looking at the diffs committed by more experienced manpage authors. FYI, The reference for groff mdoc macros, which are the preferred way of writing manpages for FreeBSD, is the groff_mdoc(7) manpage. If you have the text of the manpage, you can always ask the freebsd-doc people to review the manpage text and/or formatting.