From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Apr 12 09:38:17 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 754AF106564A for ; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 09:38:17 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Received: from igloo.linux.gr (igloo.linux.gr [62.1.205.36]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D9C198FC1B for ; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 09:38:16 +0000 (UTC) X-Spam-Status: No X-Hellug-MailScanner-From: keramida@ceid.upatras.gr X-Hellug-MailScanner-SpamCheck: not spam, SpamAssassin (not cached, score=-2.9, required 5, autolearn=not spam, ALL_TRUSTED -1.00, BAYES_00 -1.90) X-Hellug-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-Hellug-MailScanner-ID: o3C9YoMv006685 Received: from kobe.laptop (ppp-94-64-212-49.home.otenet.gr [94.64.212.49]) (authenticated bits=128) by igloo.linux.gr (8.14.3/8.14.3/Debian-9.1) with ESMTP id o3C9YoMv006685 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NOT); Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:34:56 +0300 Received: from kobe.laptop (kobe.laptop [127.0.0.1]) by kobe.laptop (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id o3C9YnVc029033 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:34:49 +0300 (EEST) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Received: (from keramida@localhost) by kobe.laptop (8.14.4/8.14.4/Submit) id o3C9Ynfi029030; Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:34:49 +0300 (EEST) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) From: Giorgos Keramidas To: Fbsd1 References: <4BB2BABF.9070401@a1poweruser.com> <4BB2F8FF.7090707@infracaninophile.co.uk> <4BB2FFB1.4020500@a1poweruser.com> <87wrwswjeo.fsf@kobe.laptop> <4BC2DE80.8090209@a1poweruser.com> Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:34:48 +0300 In-Reply-To: <4BC2DE80.8090209@a1poweruser.com> (fbsd1@a1poweruser.com's message of "Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:49:04 +0800") Message-ID: <871velko93.fsf@kobe.laptop> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.0.50 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: How to make "man" pages 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: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 09:38:17 -0000 On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:49:04 +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: > For the questions list archives: > I wrote an How To Creating a manpage from scratch. > > You can read it here. > > http://www.daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=4602 > > Thanks to all the people who replied to my post. Nice post. This is exactly the sort of post that raises the signal to noise ratio in web-based forums. Good job writing it :-) You should probably try to grok some of the semantic markup requests like .Op too though. For example this part: : SYNOPSIS : jail [-dhi] [-J jid_file] [-l -u username | -U username] [-c | -m] : jail [-hi] [-n jailname] [-J jid_file] [-s securelevel] : [-l -u username | -U username] [path hostname [ip[,..]] Is commonly written in several lines. If you try to read each line separately they do make sense, e.g.: .Nm .Op Fl dhi Will render as: jail [-dhl] with the flag letters displayed in bold text. The .Op macro wraps everything in [...] brackets. The .Fl macro marks up 'command flags'. It takes a bit of practice to write manpages using this sort of markup, but the displayed output looks great in ascii, PostScript or HTML output modes. So it's worth trying to learn more about it.