Writing Man Pages
On 4.4BSD and its descendants, including FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly BSD, and OS X, and in GNU/Linux systems, two groff macro packages are available for use in writing manual pages, man and mdoc. The man macro package is older and is the traditional macro package used to write manual pages on UNIX systems, whereas the mdoc package is newer and offers more support for semantic structuring of documents. The commands man groff_man and man groff_mdoc may be used in 4.4BSD-descended systems, and in GNU/Linux, to bring up the online documentation (man pages) for using the man and mdoc macro packages, respectively.
In addition, one can simply inspect the source code for man pages installed on the system to see how they are written, typically found in /usr/share/man and other directories on 4.4BSD-descended systems and GNU/Linux systems. (To find the location of the manual page source file for command command, type man -w command.)
Man pages can also be written in DocBook or LinuxDoc format, then converted to groff.
Read more about this topic: Man Page
Famous quotes containing the words writing, man and/or pages:
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—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The degree to which the child-rearing professionals continue to be out of touch with reality is astounding. For example, a widely read manual on breast-feeding, devotes fewer than two pages to the working mother.”
—Sylvia Ann Hewitt (20th century)