NAME

DESCRIPTION

In a man document, lines beginning with the control character ‘.' are called “macro lines”. The first word is the macro name. It usually consists of two capital letters. For a list of available macros, see MACRO OVERVIEW. The words following the macro name are arguments to the macro.

Lines not beginning with the control character are called “text lines”. They provide free-form text to be printed; the formatting of the text depends on the respective processing context:

.SH Macro lines change control state. 
Text lines are interpreted within the current state.

Many aspects of the basic syntax of the man language are based on the roff(7) language; see the LANGUAGE SYNTAX and MACRO SYNTAX sections in the roff(7) manual for details, in particular regarding comments, escape sequences, whitespace, and quoting.

MANUAL STRUCTURE

Beyond TH, at least one macro or text line must appear in the document.

The following is a well-formed skeleton man file for a utility “progname”:

.TH PROGNAME 1 2009-10-10 
.SH NAME 
\fBprogname\fR \(en a description goes here 
.\" .SH LIBRARY 
.\" For sections 2 & 3 only. 
.\" Not used in OpenBSD. 
.SH SYNOPSIS 
\fBprogname\fR [\fB\-options\fR] arguments... 
.SH DESCRIPTION 
The \fBfoo\fR utility processes files... 
.\" .SH IMPLEMENTATION NOTES 
.\" Not used in OpenBSD. 
.\" .SH RETURN VALUES 
.\" For sections 2, 3, & 9 only. 
.\" .SH ENVIRONMENT 
.\" For sections 1, 6, 7, & 8 only. 
.\" .SH FILES 
.\" .SH EXIT STATUS 
.\" For sections 1, 6, & 8 only. 
.\" .SH EXAMPLES 
.\" .SH DIAGNOSTICS 
.\" For sections 1, 4, 6, 7, & 8 only. 
.\" .SH ERRORS 
.\" For sections 2, 3, & 9 only. 
.\" .SH SEE ALSO 
.\" .BR foo ( 1 ) 
.\" .SH STANDARDS 
.\" .SH HISTORY 
.\" .SH AUTHORS 
.\" .SH CAVEATS 
.\" .SH BUGS 
.\" .SH SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS 
.\" Not used in OpenBSD.

The sections in a man document are conventionally ordered as they appear above. Sections should be composed as follows:

NAME

The name(s) and a short description of the documented material. The syntax for this is generally as follows:

\fBname\fR \(en description

LIBRARY

The name of the library containing the documented material, which is assumed to be a function in a section 2 or 3 manual. For functions in the C library, this may be as follows:

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

Documents the utility invocation syntax, function call syntax, or device configuration.

For the first, utilities (sections 1, 6, and 8), this is generally structured as follows:

\fBname\fR [-\fBab\fR] [-\fBc\fR\fIarg\fR] \fBpath\fR...

For the second, function calls (sections 2, 3, 9):

.B char *name(char *\fIarg\fR);

And for the third, configurations (section 4):

.B name* at cardbus? function?

Manuals not in these sections generally don't need a SYNOPSIS.

DESCRIPTION

This expands upon the brief, one-line description in NAME. It usually contains a break-down of the options (if documenting a command).

IMPLEMENTATION NOTES

Implementation-specific notes should be kept here. This is useful when implementing standard functions that may have side effects or notable algorithmic implications.

RETURN VALUES

This section documents the return values of functions in sections 2, 3, and 9.

ENVIRONMENT

Documents any usages of environment variables, e.g., environ(7).

FILES

Documents files used. It's helpful to document both the file name and a short description of how the file is used (created, modified, etc.).

EXIT STATUS

This section documents the command exit status for section 1, 6, and 8 utilities. Historically, this information was described in DIAGNOSTICS, a practise that is now discouraged.

EXAMPLES

Example usages. This often contains snippets of well-formed, well-tested invocations. Make sure that examples work properly!

DIAGNOSTICS

Documents error conditions. This is most useful in section 4 manuals. Historically, this section was used in place of EXIT STATUS for manuals in sections 1, 6, and 8; however, this practise is discouraged.

ERRORS

Documents error handling in sections 2, 3, and 9.

SEE ALSO

References other manuals with related topics. This section should exist for most manuals.

.BR bar ( 1 ),

Cross-references should conventionally be ordered first by section, then alphabetically.

STANDARDS

References any standards implemented or used, such as

IEEE Std 1003.2 (\(lqPOSIX.2\(rq)

If not adhering to any standards, the HISTORY section should be used.

HISTORY

A brief history of the subject, including where support first appeared.

AUTHORS

Credits to the person or persons who wrote the code and/or documentation. Authors should generally be noted by both name and email address.

CAVEATS

Common misuses and misunderstandings should be explained in this section.

BUGS

Known bugs, limitations, and work-arounds should be described in this section.

SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS

Documents any security precautions that operators should consider.

MACRO OVERVIEW

MACRO REFERENCE

MACRO SYNTAX

.I 
foo

.YO [body...] 
[body...]

.YO [head...] 
[head...] 
[body...]

COMPATIBILITY

• Do not depend on SH or SS to close out a literal context opened with nf. This behaviour may not be portable.
• In quoted literals, GNU troff allowed pair-wise double-quotes to produce a standalone double-quote in formatted output. It is not known whether this behaviour is exhibited by other formatters.
• troff suppresses a newline before ‘'' macro output; in mandoc, it is an alias for the standard ‘.' control character.
• The ‘\h' (horizontal position), ‘\v' (vertical position), ‘\m' (text colour), ‘\M' (text filling colour), ‘\z' (zero-length character), ‘\w' (string length), ‘\k' (horizontal position marker), ‘\o' (text overstrike), and ‘\s' (text size) escape sequences are all discarded in mandoc.
• The ‘\f' scaling unit is accepted by mandoc, but rendered as the default unit.
• The sp macro does not accept negative values in mandoc. In GNU troff, this would result in strange behaviour.
• In page header lines, GNU troff versions up to and including 1.21 only print volume names explicitly specified in the TH macro; mandoc and newer groff print the default volume name corresponding to the section number when no volume is given, like in mdoc(7).

The OP macro is part of the extended man macro set, and may not be portable to non-GNU troff implementations.

SEE ALSO

HISTORY

AUTHORS

CAVEATS