CATMAN(8)							Manual pager utils							 CATMAN(8)

NAME

       catman - create or update the pre-formatted manual pages

SYNOPSIS

       catman [-dhV] [-M path] [-C file] [section] ...

DESCRIPTION

       catman  is  used to create an up to date set of pre-formatted manual pages known as cat pages.  Cat pages are generally much faster to dis-
       play than the original manual pages, but require extra storage space.  The decision to support cat pages is that of the	local  administra-
       tor, who must provide suitable directories to contain them.

       The options available to catman are the manual page hierarchies and sections to pre-format.  The default hierarchies are those specified as
       system hierarchies in the man-db configuration file, and the default sections are either the colon-delimited contents  of  the  environment
       variable $MANSECT or the standard set compiled into man if $MANSECT is undefined.  Supplying catman with a set of whitespace-delimited sec-
       tion names will override both of the above.

       catman makes use of the index database cache associated with each hierarchy to determine which files need to be formatted.

OPTIONS

       -d, --debug
	      Print debugging information.

       -M path, --manpath=path
	      Specify an alternate colon-delimited manual page hierarchy search path.  By default, this is all paths indicated as  system  hierar-
	      chies in the man-db configuration file.

       -C file, --config-file=file
	      Use this user configuration file rather than the default of ~/.manpath.

       -h, --help
	      Print a help message and exit.

       -V, --version
	      Display version information.

ENVIRONMENT

       MANSECT
	      If  $MANSECT is set, its value is a colon-delimited list of sections and it is used to determine which manual sections to search and
	      in what order.

       MANPATH
	      If $MANPATH is set, its value is interpreted as the colon-delimited manual page hierarchy search path to use.

FILES

       /etc/manpath.config
	      man-db configuration file.

       /usr/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
	      A traditional global index database cache.

       /var/catman/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
	      An alternate or FSSTND compliant global index database cache.

SEE ALSO

       man(1), manpath(5), mandb(8).

AUTHOR

       Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk).
       Fabrizio Polacco (fpolacco@debian.org).

2.5.2								    2008-05-05								 CATMAN(8)