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Full Discussion: How to write a UNIX man page
Top Forums UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users How to write a UNIX man page Post 302526966 by cambridge on Thursday 2nd of June 2011 03:36:46 AM
Old 06-02-2011
Java How to write a UNIX man page

I realise that with GNU 'info' a lot of developers become, dare I say it, quite lazy when it comes to providing a well written man page - and some argue they're not needed at all. But I find, in the products that I develop, that man pages are used more often for quick reference, and therefore the quality and usability of a product can be improved by providing well written man pages.

To that end, and because I've been writing man pages myself for over 10 years, I've decided to provide some notes for beginners on how to write your own man page. I hope this article is of help to the wider developer community:

Technical Prose: How to write a UNIX man page

Best regards,
Mark.
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UNDOCUMENTED(7) 					     Linux Programmer's Manual						   UNDOCUMENTED(7)

NAME
undocumented - No manpage for this program, utility or function. DESCRIPTION
This program, utility or function does not have a useful manpage. Before opening a bug to report this, please check with the Debian Bug Tracking System (BTS) at <http://bugs.debian.org/> if a bug has already been reported. If not, you can submit a wishlist bug if you want. If you are a competent and accurate writer and are willing to spend the time reading the source code and writing good manpages please write a better man page than this one. Please contact the package maintainer and copy man-pages@qa.debian.org in order to avoid several people working on the same manpage. Even if you are not an accurate writer, your input may be helpful. Writing manual pages is quite easy, the format is described in man(7). The most important and time-consuming task is to collect the information to be put in the new manpage. DIAGNOSTICS
It is possible that the man page for the command you specified is installed and that your manual page index caches are out of sync. You should try running mandb(8). Try the following options if you want more information: foo --help, foo -h, foo -? info foo whatis foo, apropos foo dpkg --listfiles foo, dpkg --search foo locate '*foo*' find / -name '*foo*' Additionally, check the directories /usr/share/doc/foo, /usr/lib/foo. The documentation might be in a package starting with the same name as the package the software belongs to, but ending with -doc or -docs. If you still didn't find the information you are looking for you might consider posting a call for help to debian-user@lists.debian.org. SEE ALSO
info(1), whatis(1), apropos(1), dpkg(8), locate(1), find(1), updatedb(1), undocumented(3), man(7), mandb(8), missing(7). Debian GNU/Linux August 24th, 2003 UNDOCUMENTED(7)
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