# How man pages are generated. Man pages are generated from markdown sources. Command line tools --help option provides a very brief usage and list of options. Man pages should be more detailed, but we do not want to repeat the option information from --help as it will easily become out of date. A small python script helt2md.py combines the manpage markdown source named *.noopt.md with the output of "program --help" into a single markdown file. The final man page is generated from the markdown by pandoc. # A really quick guide to nroff and man-page macros ## The title heading .TH

.TH somefile.conf 5 .TH somedaemon 8 ## Section headings .SH .SH OPTIONS .SH "SOMETHING ELSE" ## Subsection headings .SS ## Indented paragraphs for named items .IP ## Paragraph breaks .P ## Bold and italic .B "some bold text" .I "some italic text" Some \fBbold text\fP Some \fIitalic text\fP ## Things to keep in mind - Arguments containing spaces must be quoted: "some arg" - Dot macros must start on their own line ## More information - http://linux.die.net/man/7/man-pages - http://linux.die.net/man/7/man - http://www.fnal.gov/docs/products/ups/ReferenceManual/html/manpages.html