1 README file for man(1).
3 This is a replacement for Un*x man(1), apropos(1), whatis(1), and
4 manpath(1). It has all kinds of neat features that other versions of
5 man don't, including support for multiple man page directory trees,
6 preformatted man pages, and troff. It is provided without any
7 warranty whatever. I hope you find it useful.
9 This program is not a GNU product but it is distributed under the
10 terms of the GNU copyleft which is described in the file COPYING.
12 There is a solution written in perl which is probably superior in
13 every way, but, like me, you may prefer this one anyway.
16 If you compile with support for preformatted man pages, man(1) will
17 try to update the preformatted page if the man page source is newer.
19 If you compile with support for troff, you can say things like
20 `man -t foo | psdit > foo.ps' and have fabulous printed documentation
23 I have resisted the temptation to handle all the bizarre ways various
24 vendors have of organizing man pages. This version of man assumes
25 that directory trees have the structure:
35 where Sect is some number or string and should be listed in the set of
36 sections to be searched. It is not necessary to have both the cat*
37 and man* subdirectories, but you must have at least one. :-)
42 1. Run configure. This will grope around your system a bit and then
43 ask you a number of questions. It will create a Makefile from the
44 file Makefile.in, and a config.h file from config.h.in. You may
45 have to do some fine tuning to get things to work exactly right on
46 your system. If you do, I'd like to know what changes you had to
47 make to get things working.
49 2. Edit the manpath.config file. This determines the system-wide
50 mappings for bin directories and man page directories.
52 3. Do a `make all', try it out, and then if you're happy with that, do
53 a `make install'. You don't need to be root to use this set of
56 4. Install the whatis database(s) by running makewhatis. If you want
57 to keep things absolutely current, you'll need to run this whenever
58 you add new man pages. You might want to add an entry in your
63 If you find one of these, please tell me about it. If you have a fix,
64 that's even better. If not, I can't guarantee that I'll fix it, but I
65 would like to know about them.
69 Department of Chemical Engineering
70 The University of Texas at Austin
76 Partial list of changes since version 1.0:
78 Installation made easier (this was the intent anyway) with the
79 introduction of a configure script.
81 Commands like `man 3f intro' handled properly when the name of the
82 file we want is something like .../man3/intro.3f.
84 Man can now run set uid to a special user so formatted man pages don't
85 have to be world writable.
87 Man now works with compressed (.Z) frozen (.F) and yabba (.Y) cat
88 files. Frozen files are compressed files using freeze/melt, some
89 combination of LZW and tree coding. Sources for it came out on
90 comp.sources.misc or alt.sources or ... a few months ago. Yabba files
91 are compressed using yabba/unyabba, a data compression scheme posted
92 to alt.sources by Dan Bernstein.
94 Man now uses a more reasonable default for the search order:
95 1, n, l, 6, 8, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, p, o
97 Man now allows for user-definable section search order via -S or
100 Glob.c can work even if you don't have alloca, and works properly on
101 Suns with the Sun C compiler.
103 There is now a way to automatically to run preprocessors like the Sun
104 man program. The first line of the man page indicates which
105 preprocessors should be run:
107 If the first line is a string of the form:
111 where X is separated from the `"' by a single SPACE and
112 consists of any combination of characters in the following
113 list, man pipes its input to troff(1) or nroff(1) through
114 the corresponding preprocessors.
116 e eqn(1), or neqn for nroff
120 t tbl(1), and col(1V) for nroff
123 Preprocessors may also be set on the command line with -p or from the
124 environment with MANROFFSEQ.
126 The tbl preprocessor is run by default.
128 Manpath now stat()'s the directories in MANPATH to avoid including
129 directories that don't exist.
131 The output of apropos and whatis are now piped through PAGER.
133 There is a new option to show where you would find a man page
134 (-w option) and in what order (-w with -a).