man — macros to format man pages
groff −Tascii −man ... groff −Tps −man ... man
This manual page explains the groff an.tmac macro package (often
called the man
macro package). This macro package should be used by
developers when writing or porting man pages for Linux. It is
fairly compatible with other versions of this macro package,
so porting man pages should not be a major problem
(exceptions include the NET-2 BSD release, which uses a
totally different macro package called mdoc; see mdoc(7)).
Note that NET-2 BSD mdoc man pages can be used with
groff simply by
specifying the −mdoc option
instead of the −man option.
Using the −mandoc option
is, however, recommended, since this will automatically
detect which macro package is in use.
For conventions that should be employed when writing man
pages for the Linux man-pages package, see
man-pages(7).
The first command in a man page (after comment lines,
that is, lines that start with .\") should be
.THtitle section date source manual
For details of the arguments that should be supplied to
the TH command, see man-pages(7).
Note that BSD mdoc-formatted pages begin with the
Dd command, not
the TH command.
Sections are started with .SH followed by the heading
name.
The only mandatory heading is NAME, which should be the first section and be followed on the next line by a one line description of the program:
.SH NAME
It is extremely important that this format is followed, and that there is a backslash before the single dash which follows the command name. This syntax is used by the makewhatis(8) program to create a database of short command descriptions for the whatis(1) and apropos(1) commands.
For a list of other sections that might appear in a manual page, see man-pages(7).
The commands to select the type face are:
Bold
Bold alternating with italics (especially useful for function specifications)
Bold alternating with Roman (especially useful for referring to other manual pages)
Italics
Italics alternating with bold
Italics alternating with Roman
Roman alternating with bold
Roman alternating with italics
Small alternating with bold
Small (useful for acronyms)
Traditionally, each command can have up to six
arguments, but the GNU implementation removes this
limitation (you might still want to limit yourself to 6
arguments for portability's sake). Arguments are delimited
by spaces. Double quotes can be used to specify an argument
which contains spaces. All of the arguments will be printed
next to each other without intervening spaces, so that the
.BR command can
be used to specify a word in bold followed by a mark of
punctuation in Roman. If no arguments are given, the
command is applied to the following line of text.
Below are other relevant macros and predefined strings.
Unless noted otherwise, all macros cause a break (end the
current line of text). Many of these macros set or use the
"prevailing indent." The "prevailing indent" value is set
by any macro with the parameter i below; macros may omit
i in which case
the current prevailing indent will be used. As a result,
successive indented paragraphs can use the same indent
without re-specifying the indent value. A normal
(non-indented) paragraph resets the prevailing indent value
to its default value (0.5 inches). By default a given
indent is measured in ens; try to use ens or ems as units
for indents, since these will automatically adjust to font
size changes. The other key macro definitions are:
Same as .PP (begin a new
paragraph).
Same as .PP (begin a new
paragraph).
Begin a new paragraph and reset prevailing indent.
.RS iStart relative margin indent: moves the left
margin i to
the right (if i is omitted, the
prevailing indent value is used). A new prevailing
indent is set to 0.5 inches. As a result, all
following paragraph(s) will be indented until the
corresponding .RE.
End relative margin indent and restores the previous value of the prevailing indent.
.HP iBegin paragraph with a hanging indent (the first line of the paragraph is at the left margin of normal paragraphs, and the rest of the paragraph's lines are indented).
.IP x iIndented paragraph with optional hanging tag. If
the tag x
is omitted, the entire following paragraph is
indented by i. If the tag
x is
provided, it is hung at the left margin before the
following indented paragraph (this is just like
.TP except
the tag is included with the command instead of being
on the following line). If the tag is too long, the
text after the tag will be moved down to the next
line (text will not be lost or garbled). For bulleted
lists, use this macro with \(bu (bullet) or \(em (em
dash) as the tag, and for numbered lists, use the
number or letter followed by a period as the tag;
this simplifies translation to other formats.
.TP iBegin paragraph with hanging tag. The tag is given
on the next line, but its results are like those of
the .IP
command.
(Feature supported with groff only.) In order to
use hypertext link macros, it is necessary to load the
www.tmac macro
package. Use the request .mso
www.tmac to do this.
.URL url link trailerInserts a hypertext link to the URI (URL)
url, with
link as the
text of the link. The trailer will be
printed immediately afterwards. When generating HTML
this should translate into the HTML command
<A
HREF="url">link</A>trailer.
This and other related macros are new, and many tools won't do anything with them, but since many tools (including troff) will simply ignore undefined macros (or at worst insert their text) these are safe to insert.
It can be useful to define your own URL macro in manual pages for the
benefit of those viewing it with a roff viewer other
than groff.
That way, the URL, link text, and trailer text (if
any) are still visible.
Here's an example:
.de URL
\\$2 \(laURL: \\$1 \(ra\\$3
..
.if \n[.g] .mso www.tmac
.TH
...(later in the page) This software comes from the .URL "http://www.gnu.org/" "GNU Project" " of the".URL "http://www.fsf.org/" "Free Software Foundation" .
In the above, if groff is being used,
the www.tmac macro
package's definition of the URL macro will supersede
the locally defined one.
A number of other link macros are available. See groff_www(7) for more details.
Reset tabs to default tab values (every 0.5 inches); does not cause a break.
.PD dSet inter-paragraph vertical distance to d (if omitted, d=0.4v); does not cause a break.
.SS tSubheading t (like .SH, but used for a
subsection inside a section).
The man
package has the following predefined strings:
\*RRegistration Symbol: ®
\*SChange to default font size
\*(TmTrademark Symbol: ™
\*(lqLeft angled double quote: «
\*(rqRight angled double quote: »
Although technically man is a troff macro
package, in reality a large number of other tools process
man page files that don't implement all of troff's
abilities. Thus, it's best to avoid some of troff's more
exotic abilities where possible to permit these other tools
to work correctly. Avoid using the various troff
preprocessors (if you must, go ahead and use tbl(1), but try to use the
IP and TP commands instead for two-column
tables). Avoid using computations; most other tools can't
process them. Use simple commands that are easy to
translate to other formats. The following troff macros are
believed to be safe (though in many cases they will be
ignored by translators): \", ., ad, bp, br, ce, de, ds, el, ie, if, fi, ft, hy, ig, in, na, ne, nf, nh, ps, so, sp, ti, tr.
You may also use many troff escape sequences (those
sequences beginning with \). When you need to include the
backslash character as normal text, use \e. Other sequences
you may use, where x or xx are any characters and N is any
digit, include: \', \`, -, \., \", \%, \*x, \*(xx, \(xx, \$N, \nx, \n(xx, \fx, and \f(xx. Avoid using the
escape sequences for drawing graphics.
Do not use the optional parameter for bp (break page). Use only
positive values for sp (vertical space). Don't
define a macro (de) with the same name as a
macro in this or the mdoc macro package with a different
meaning; it's likely that such redefinitions will be
ignored. Every positive indent (in) should be paired with a
matching negative indent (although you should be using the
RS and RE macros instead). The condition test
(if,ie) should
only have 't' or 'n' as the condition. Only translations
(tr) that can be
ignored should be used. Font changes (ft and the \f escape sequence) should
only have the values 1, 2, 3, 4, R, I, B, P, or CW (the ft
command may also have no parameters).
If you use capabilities beyond these, check the results carefully on several tools. Once you've confirmed that the additional capability is safe, let the maintainer of this document know about the safe command or sequence that should be added to this list.
By all means include full URLs (or URIs) in the text
itself; some tools such as man2html(1) can automatically
turn them into hypertext links. You can also use the new
URL macro to identify links to
related information. If you include URLs, use the full URL
(e.g., <http://www.kernelnotes.org>) to ensure that
tools can automatically find the URLs.
Tools processing these files should open the file and examine the first non-whitespace character. A period (.) or single quote (') at the beginning of a line indicates a troff-based file (such as man or mdoc). A left angle bracket (<) indicates an SGML/XML-based file (such as HTML or Docbook). Anything else suggests simple ASCII text (e.g., a "catman" result).
Many man pages begin with '\" followed by a space and a list of characters, indicating how the page is to be preprocessed. For portability's sake to non-troff translators we recommend that you avoid using anything other than tbl(1), and Linux can detect that automatically. However, you might want to include this information so your man page can be handled by other (less capable) systems. Here are the definitions of the preprocessors invoked by these characters:
eqn(1)
grap(1)
pic(1)
refer(1)
tbl(1)
vgrind(1)
Most of the macros describe formatting (e.g., font type
and spacing) instead of marking semantic content (e.g., this
text is a reference to another page), compared to formats
like mdoc and DocBook (even HTML has more semantic markings).
This situation makes it harder to vary the man format for different
media, to make the formatting consistent for a given media,
and to automatically insert cross-references. By sticking to
the safe subset described above, it should be easier to
automate transitioning to a different reference page format
in the future.
The Sun macro TX is not
implemented.
apropos(1), groff(1), man(1), man2html(1), whatis(1), groff_man(7), groff_www(7), man-pages(7), mdoc(7), mdoc.samples(7)
This page is part of release 2.79 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, and information about reporting
bugs, can be found at
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
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(C) Copyright 1992-1999 Rickard E. Faith and David A. Wheeler (faithcs.unc.edu and dwheelerida.org) Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual, which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working professionally. Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work. Modified Sun Jul 25 11:06:05 1993 by Rik Faith (faithcs.unc.edu) Modified Sat Jun 8 00:39:52 1996 by aeb Modified Wed Jun 16 23:00:00 1999 by David A. Wheeler (dwheelerida.org) Modified Thu Jul 15 12:43:28 1999 by aeb Modified Sun Jan 6 18:26:25 2002 by Martin Schulze <joeyinfodrom.org> Modified Tue Jul 27 20:12:02 2004 by Colin Watson <cjwatsondebian.org> 2007-05-30, mtk: various rewrites and moved much text to new man-pages.7. |