man(5) Standards, Environments, and Macros man(5)NAMEman - macros to format Reference Manual pages
SYNOPSIS
nroff -man filename...
troff -man filename...
DESCRIPTION
These macros are used to lay out the reference pages in this manual.
Note: if filename contains format input for a preprocessor, the com‐
mands shown above must be piped through the appropriate preprocessor.
This is handled automatically by the man(1) command. See the ``Conven‐
tions'' section.
Any text argument t may be zero to six words. Quotes may be used to
include <SPACE> characters in a "word". If text is empty, the special
treatment is applied to the next input line with text to be printed. In
this way .I may be used to italicize a whole line, or .SB may be used
to make small bold letters.
A prevailing indent distance is remembered between successive indented
paragraphs, and is reset to default value upon reaching a non-indented
paragraph. Default units for indents i are ens.
Type font and size are reset to default values before each paragraph,
and after processing font and size setting macros.
These strings are predefined by -man:
\*R `®', `(Reg)' in nroff.
\*S Change to default type size.
Requests
* n.t.l. = next text line; p.i. = prevailing indent
Request Cause If no Explanation
Break Argument
.B t no t=n.t.l.* Text is in bold font.
.BI t no t=n.t.l. Join words, alternating bold
and italic.
.BR t no t=n.t.l. Join words, alternating bold
and roman.
.DT no .5i 1i... Restore default tabs.
.HP i yes i=p.i.* Begin paragraph with hanging
indent. Set prevailing indent
to i.
.I t no t=n.t.l. Text is italic.
.IB t no t=n.t.l. Join words, alternating italic
and bold.
.IP x i yes x="" Same as .TP with tag x.
.IR t no t=n.t.l. Join words, alternating italic
and roman.
.IX t no - Index macro, for SunSoft inter‐
nal use.
.LP yes - Begin left-aligned paragraph.
Set prevailing indent to .5i.
.P yes - Same as .LP.
.PD d no d=.4v Set vertical distance between
paragraphs.
.PP yes - Same as .LP.
.RE yes - End of relative indent.
Restores prevailing indent.
.RB t no t=n.t.l. Join words, alternating roman
and bold.
.RI t no t=n.t.l. Join words, alternating roman
and italic.
.RS i yes i=p.i. Start relative indent, increase
indent by i. Sets prevailing
indent to .5i for nested
indents.
.SB t no - Reduce size of text by 1 point,
make text bold.
.SH t yes - Section Heading.
.SM t no t=n.t.l. Reduce size of text by 1 point.
.SS t yes t=n.t.l. Section Subheading.
.TH n s d f m yes - Begin reference page n, of of
section s; d is the date of the
most recent change. If
present, f is the left page
footer; m is the main page
(center) header. Sets prevail‐
ing indent and tabs to .5i.
.TP i yes i=p.i. Begin indented paragraph, with
the tag given on the next text
line. Set prevailing indent to
i.
.TX t p no - Resolve the title abbreviation
t; join to punctuation mark (or
text) p.
Conventions
When formatting a manual page, man examines the first line to determine
whether it requires special processing. For example a first line con‐
sisting of:
'\" t
indicates that the manual page must be run through the tbl(1) pre‐
processor.
A typical manual page for a command or function is laid out as follows:
.TH title [1-9] The name of the command or function, which
serves as the title of the manual page. This
is followed by the number of the section in
which it appears.
.SH NAME The name, or list of names, by which the com‐
mand is called, followed by a dash and then a
one-line summary of the action performed. All
in roman font, this section contains no
troff(1) commands or escapes, and no macro
requests. It is used to generate the windex
database, which is used by the whatis(1) com‐
mand.
.SH SYNOPSIS
Commands:
The syntax of the command and its argu‐
ments, as typed on the command line. When
in boldface, a word must be typed exactly
as printed. When in italics, a word can be
replaced with an argument that you supply.
References to bold or italicized items are
not capitalized in other sections, even
when they begin a sentence.
Syntactic symbols appear in roman face:
[ ] An argument, when surrounded by
brackets is optional.
| Arguments separated by a vertical
bar are exclusive. You can supply
only one item from such a list.
... Arguments followed by an ellipsis
can be repeated. When an ellipsis
follows a bracketed set, the
expression within the brackets can
be repeated.
Functions:
If required, the data declaration, or
#include directive, is shown first, fol‐
lowed by the function declaration. Other‐
wise, the function declaration is shown.
.SH DESCRIPTION A narrative overview of the command or func‐
tion's external behavior. This includes how it
interacts with files or data, and how it han‐
dles the standard input, standard output and
standard error. Internals and implementation
details are normally omitted. This section
attempts to provide a succinct overview in
answer to the question, "what does it do?"
Literal text from the synopsis appears in con‐
stant width, as do literal filenames and refer‐
ences to items that appear elsewhere in the
reference manuals. Arguments are italicized.
If a command interprets either subcommands or
an input grammar, its command interface or
input grammar is normally described in a USAGE
section, which follows the OPTIONS section.
The DESCRIPTION section only describes the
behavior of the command itself, not that of
subcommands.
.SH OPTIONS The list of options along with a description of
how each affects the command's operation.
.SH RETURN VALUES A list of the values the library routine will
return to the calling program and the condi‐
tions that cause these values to be returned.
.SH EXIT STATUS A list of the values the utility will return to
the calling program or shell, and the condi‐
tions that cause these values to be returned.
.SH FILES A list of files associated with the command or
function.
.SH SEE ALSO A comma-separated list of related manual pages,
followed by references to other published mate‐
rials.
.SH DIAGNOSTICS A list of diagnostic messages and an explana‐
tion of each.
.SH BUGS A description of limitations, known defects,
and possible problems associated with the com‐
mand or function.
FILES
/usr/share/lib/tmac/an
/usr/share/man/windex
SEE ALSOman(1), nroff(1), troff(1), whatis(1)
Dale Dougherty and Tim O'Reilly, Unix Text Processing
SunOS 5.10 30 Jan 1995 man(5)
