whatis(5) [minix man page]

WHATIS(5)							File Formats Manual							 WHATIS(5)

NAME

       whatis - database of online manual pages

SYNOPSIS

       /usr/man/*/whatis
       /usr/man/whatis

DESCRIPTION

       The  whatis  file in each manual page directory is a database of titles for manual pages.  This database is used by man(1) to map titles to
       manual pages names.  The database is created by makewhatis(1) from the NAME sections of the manual pages.

       The NAME secions must be simple lines with no troff fluff but one backslash like these two:

	      whatis - database of online manual pages
	      cawf, nroff - C version of the nroff-like, Amazingly Workable (text) Formatter

       These lines are transformed by makewhatis to these two lines for the database:

	      cawf, nroff (1) - C version of the nroff-like, Amazingly Workable (text) Formatter
	      whatis (5) - database of online manual pages

       As you can see they are in section number order, so that man searches them in section order.

       Each entry is just a single line, restricting the NAME section to a single line too with just one dash, and commas and  spaces  before  the
       dash as you see above.

SEE ALSO

       man(1), whatis(1), makewhatis(1), man(7).

BUGS

       It  seems  to  be  impossible  for many manual page writers to keep the NAME section simple.  They also like to use every font available in
       their documents.  My simple scripts can't read their NAME sections, my simple me can't read their texts.

AUTHOR

       Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)

																	 WHATIS(5)

MAKEWHATIS(8)						      System Manager's Manual						     MAKEWHATIS(8)

NAME

       makewhatis - Create the whatis database

SYNOPSIS

       makewhatis [-u] [-v] [-w] [-s sections ] [-c [catpath]] [manpath]

DESCRIPTION

       makewhatis  reads all the manual pages contained in the given sections of manpath or the preformatted pages contained in the given sections
       of catpath.  For each page, it writes a line in the whatis database; each line consists of the name of the page and  a  short  description,
       separated by a dash. The description is extracted using the content of the NAME section of the manual page.

       Since  other  languages	use  a different term for the NAME section, makewhatis recognizes the equivalent terms in Czech, Italian, Finnish,
       French, German and Spanish.

       If no manpath argument is given, /usr/man is assumed by default.

OPTIONS

       -u     Update database with new pages.

       -v     Verbose output

       -w     Use manpath obtained from `man --path`

       -s sections
	      Looks in the sections of manpath or catpath.  If the option is absent, its value is assumed to be '1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 n l'

       -c catpath
	      The preformatted manual pages located in catpath are scanned. If the argument is not provided, it is assumed to be the first  exist-
	      ing directory between /usr/man/preformat and /usr/man.

EXAMPLES

       To rebuild only /usr/X11R6/man/whatis and /usr/local/man/whatis

	      makewhatis /usr/X11R6/man /usr/local/man

       To rebuild all the databases, including those of the Finnish, French and Italian translations

	      LANGUAGE=fi:fr:it makewhatis -w

BUGS

       makewhatis may not handle too well manual pages written with non-standard troff macros, such as the Tcl/Tk pages.

       makewhatis does not work on preformatted translations.

SEE ALSO

       apropos(1), man(1), whatis(1)

								  22 January 1999						     MAKEWHATIS(8)