Re: man pages

[kevinh -at- DEV -dot- TIVOLI -dot- COM]

[I originally responded on the bit.listserv.techwr-l newsgroup
instead of sending it to the list. Apologies to those who see
this twice.]

Bernice Kieffer wrote:
>
> Hi John:
>
> The best and easiest way to create a man page is to convert the Frame file to
> acscii using something like FM2A. Once you have the ascii file, all you have
to
> do isplace it in the following directory structure:
>
> man1/filename.1
>
> The UNIX filter looks for the man1 directory then for the filename.1 file and
> prints the information on screen.
>

OK, now I'm confused. None of the replies to John Posada's original
question I've seen so far have mentioned troff, nroff, or any of its
variants.
How are other companies able to produce man pages without using one
of those ancient typesetting languages? I tell ya, the writers at my
company would love to stop using troff to produce UNIX man pages.
I'd like to know more about a Frame -> troff filter. The one that
we've kluged never seems to make the conversion 100%.

John, if you want to see what man pages look like in troff, cd to
/usr/share/man/man1 , then start viewing files at random. Note that
the path may vary between operating systems. You should be able to
type echo $MANPATH from a command line to find the path to the UNIX
man page files.



Kevin Harper      | "If you're not part of the solution,
                  |  you're part of the precipitate."
kevinh -at- tivoli -dot- com |   -- Steven Wright