From owner-freebsd-ports Mon Aug 5 11:59:20 1996 Return-Path: owner-ports Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id LAA11350 for ports-outgoing; Mon, 5 Aug 1996 11:59:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from seagull.rtd.com (root@seagull.rtd.com [198.102.68.2]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id LAA11343 for ; Mon, 5 Aug 1996 11:59:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from dgy@localhost) by seagull.rtd.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id LAA18283; Mon, 5 Aug 1996 11:58:48 -0700 (MST) From: Don Yuniskis Message-Id: <199608051858.LAA18283@seagull.rtd.com> Subject: Re: Writing man pages To: james@nexis.net (James FitzGibbon) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 11:58:48 -0700 (MST) Cc: ports@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: from "James FitzGibbon" at Aug 5, 96 02:26:51 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-ports@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > Question: if the author of a program provides no manpage-style > documentation, is it customary for the porter to create one ? If so, can > someone point be to a resource on writing man pages ? [Wow... what a great opportunity to mislead this guy, eh???] Seriously, though, it would be *great* if you (the porter) would write a man page!! And, send it back to the author of the original software, too -- I'm sure it would be appreciated. But, to answer your question, no, it isn't "customary". Writing a man page is usually a thankless job. Often, you can piece one together from sections of the READMEs and code fragments (e.g., usage()) Or, there may be a "manual" (in TeX format, etc.) that you can bend into shape (I've done this twice in the past week). It's not ideal but is better than nothing! Look at 'man mdoc.samples' for some hints... --don