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MAN(7) Linux Programmer's Manual MAN(7)
NAME
man - macros to format man pages
SYNOPSIS
groff -Tascii -man file ...
groff -Tps -man file ...
man [section] title
DESCRIPTION
This manual page explains the groff an.tmac macro package (often called the man macro
package). This macro package should be used by developers when writing or porting man
pages for Linux. It is fairly compatible with other versions of this macro package, so
porting man pages should not be a major problem (exceptions include the NET-2 BSD release,
which uses a totally different macro package called mdoc; see mdoc(7)).
Note that NET-2 BSD mdoc man pages can be used with groff simply by specifying the -mdoc
option instead of the -man option. Using the -mandoc option is, however, recommended,
since this will automatically detect which macro package is in use.
For conventions that should be employed when writing man pages for the Linux man-pages
package, see man-pages(7).
Title line
The first command in a man page (after comment lines, that is, lines that start with .\")
should be
.TH title section date source manual
For details of the arguments that should be supplied to the TH command, see man-pages(7).
Note that BSD mdoc-formatted pages begin with the Dd command, not the TH command.
Sections
Sections are started with .SH followed by the heading name.
The only mandatory heading is NAME, which should be the first section and be followed on
the next line by a one-line description of the program:
.SH NAME
item \- description
It is extremely important that this format is followed, and that there is a backslash be-
fore the single dash which follows the item name. This syntax is used by the mandb(8)
program to create a database of short descriptions for the whatis(1) and apropos(1) com-
mands. (See lexgrog(1) for further details on the syntax of the NAME section.)
For a list of other sections that might appear in a manual page, see man-pages(7).
Fonts
The commands to select the type face are:
.B Bold
.BI Bold alternating with italics (especially useful for function specifications)
.BR Bold alternating with Roman (especially useful for referring to other manual pages)
.I Italics
.IB Italics alternating with bold
.IR Italics alternating with Roman
.RB Roman alternating with bold
.RI Roman alternating with italics
.SB Small alternating with bold
.SM Small (useful for acronyms)
Traditionally, each command can have up to six arguments, but the GNU implementation re-
moves this limitation (you might still want to limit yourself to 6 arguments for portabil-
ity's sake). Arguments are delimited by spaces. Double quotes can be used to specify an
argument which contains spaces. All of the arguments will be printed next to each other
without intervening spaces, so that the .BR command can be used to specify a word in bold
followed by a mark of punctuation in Roman. If no arguments are given, the command is ap-
plied to the following line of text.
Other macros and strings
Below are other relevant macros and predefined strings. Unless noted otherwise, all
macros cause a break (end the current line of text). Many of these macros set or use the
"prevailing indent." The "prevailing indent" value is set by any macro with the parameter
i below; macros may omit i in which case the current prevailing indent will be used. As a
result, successive indented paragraphs can use the same indent without respecifying the
indent value. A normal (nonindented) paragraph resets the prevailing indent value to its
default value (0.5 inches). By default, a given indent is measured in ens; try to use ens
or ems as units for indents, since these will automatically adjust to font size changes.
The other key macro definitions are:
Normal paragraphs
.LP Same as .PP (begin a new paragraph).
.P Same as .PP (begin a new paragraph).
.PP Begin a new paragraph and reset prevailing indent.
Relative margin indent
.RS i Start relative margin indent: moves the left margin i to the right (if i is omit-
ted, the prevailing indent value is used). A new prevailing indent is set to 0.5
inches. As a result, all following paragraph(s) will be indented until the cor-
responding .RE.
.RE End relative margin indent and restores the previous value of the prevailing in-
dent.
Indented paragraph macros
.HP i Begin paragraph with a hanging indent (the first line of the paragraph is at the
left margin of normal paragraphs, and the rest of the paragraph's lines are in-
dented).
.IP x i Indented paragraph with optional hanging tag. If the tag x is omitted, the en-
tire following paragraph is indented by i. If the tag x is provided, it is hung
at the left margin before the following indented paragraph (this is just like .TP
except the tag is included with the command instead of being on the following
line). If the tag is too long, the text after the tag will be moved down to the
next line (text will not be lost or garbled). For bulleted lists, use this macro
with \(bu (bullet) or \(em (em dash) as the tag, and for numbered lists, use the
number or letter followed by a period as the tag; this simplifies translation to
other formats.
.TP i Begin paragraph with hanging tag. The tag is given on the next line, but its re-
sults are like those of the .IP command.
Hypertext link macros
.UR url
Insert a hypertext link to the URI (URL) url, with all text up to the following .UE
macro as the link text.
.UE [trailer]
Terminate the link text of the preceding .UR macro, with the optional trailer (if
present, usually a closing parenthesis and/or end-of-sentence punctuation) immedi-
ately following. For non-HTML output devices (e.g., man -Tutf8), the link text is
followed by the URL in angle brackets; if there is no link text, the URL is printed
as its own link text, surrounded by angle brackets. (Angle brackets may not be
available on all output devices.) For the HTML output device, the link text is hy-
perlinked to the URL; if there is no link text, the URL is printed as its own link
text.
These macros have been supported since GNU Troff 1.20 (2009-01-05) and Heirloom Doctools
Troff since 160217 (2016-02-17).
Miscellaneous macros
.DT Reset tabs to default tab values (every 0.5 inches); does not cause a break.
.PD d Set inter-paragraph vertical distance to d (if omitted, d=0.4v); does not cause a
break.
.SS t Subheading t (like .SH, but used for a subsection inside a section).
Predefined strings
The man package has the following predefined strings:
\*R Registration Symbol: (R)
\*S Change to default font size
\*(Tm Trademark Symbol: tm
\*(lq Left angled double quote: "
\*(rq Right angled double quote: "
Safe subset
Although technically man is a troff macro package, in reality a large number of other
tools process man page files that don't implement all of troff's abilities. Thus, it's
best to avoid some of troff's more exotic abilities where possible to permit these other
tools to work correctly. Avoid using the various troff preprocessors (if you must, go
ahead and use tbl(1), but try to use the IP and TP commands instead for two-column ta-
bles). Avoid using computations; most other tools can't process them. Use simple com-
mands that are easy to translate to other formats. The following troff macros are be-
lieved to be safe (though in many cases they will be ignored by translators): \", ., ad,
bp, br, ce, de, ds, el, ie, if, fi, ft, hy, ig, in, na, ne, nf, nh, ps, so, sp, ti, tr.
You may also use many troff escape sequences (those sequences beginning with \). When you
need to include the backslash character as normal text, use \e. Other sequences you may
use, where x or xx are any characters and N is any digit, include: \', \`, \-, \., \", \%,
\*x, \*(xx, \(xx, \$N, \nx, \n(xx, \fx, and \f(xx. Avoid using the escape sequences for
drawing graphics.
Do not use the optional parameter for bp (break page). Use only positive values for sp
(vertical space). Don't define a macro (de) with the same name as a macro in this or the
mdoc macro package with a different meaning; it's likely that such redefinitions will be
ignored. Every positive indent (in) should be paired with a matching negative indent (al-
though you should be using the RS and RE macros instead). The condition test (if,ie)
should only have 't' or 'n' as the condition. Only translations (tr) that can be ignored
should be used. Font changes (ft and the \f escape sequence) should only have the values
1, 2, 3, 4, R, I, B, P, or CW (the ft command may also have no parameters).
If you use capabilities beyond these, check the results carefully on several tools. Once
you've confirmed that the additional capability is safe, let the maintainer of this docu-
ment know about the safe command or sequence that should be added to this list.
FILES
/usr/share/groff/[*/]tmac/an.tmac
/usr/man/whatis
NOTES
By all means include full URLs (or URIs) in the text itself; some tools such as
man2html(1) can automatically turn them into hypertext links. You can also use the UR and
UE macros to identify links to related information. If you include URLs, use the full URL
(e.g., <http://www.kernel.org>) to ensure that tools can automatically find the URLs.
Tools processing these files should open the file and examine the first nonwhitespace
character. A period (.) or single quote (') at the beginning of a line indicates a troff-
based file (such as man or mdoc). A left angle bracket (<) indicates an SGML/XML-based
file (such as HTML or Docbook). Anything else suggests simple ASCII text (e.g., a "cat-
man" result).
Many man pages begin with '\" followed by a space and a list of characters, indicating how
the page is to be preprocessed. For portability's sake to non-troff translators we recom-
mend that you avoid using anything other than tbl(1), and Linux can detect that automati-
cally. However, you might want to include this information so your man page can be han-
dled by other (less capable) systems. Here are the definitions of the preprocessors in-
voked by these characters:
e eqn(1)
g grap(1)
p pic(1)
r refer(1)
t tbl(1)
v vgrind(1)
BUGS
Most of the macros describe formatting (e.g., font type and spacing) instead of marking
semantic content (e.g., this text is a reference to another page), compared to formats
like mdoc and DocBook (even HTML has more semantic markings). This situation makes it
harder to vary the man format for different media, to make the formatting consistent for a
given media, and to automatically insert cross-references. By sticking to the safe subset
described above, it should be easier to automate transitioning to a different reference
page format in the future.
The Sun macro TX is not implemented.
SEE ALSO
apropos(1), groff(1), lexgrog(1), man(1), man2html(1), groff_mdoc(7), whatis(1),
groff_man(7), groff_www(7), man-pages(7), mdoc(7)
COLOPHON
This page is part of release 5.05 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the
project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be
found at https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Linux 2019-03-06 MAN(7)
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