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#! rnews 1820 bsd Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!swrinde!gatech!newsxfer2.itd.umich.edu!chi-news.cic.net!mr.net!winternet.com!news.neocom.ca!news 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