1man(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual man(7)
2
6 man - macros to format man pages
7
9 groff -Tascii -man file ...
10 groff -Tps -man file ...
11 man [section] title
13
15 This manual page explains the groff an.tmac macro package (often called
16 the man macro package). This macro package should be used by develop‐
17 ers when writing or porting man pages for Linux. It is fairly compati‐
18 ble with other versions of this macro package, so porting man pages
19 should not be a major problem (exceptions include the NET-2 BSD re‐
20 lease, which uses a totally different macro package called mdoc; see
21 mdoc(7)).
22 Note that NET-2 BSD mdoc man pages can be used with groff simply by
24 specifying the -mdoc option instead of the -man option. Using the
25 -mandoc option is, however, recommended, since this will automatically
26 detect which macro package is in use.
27 For conventions that should be employed when writing man pages for the
29 Linux man-pages package, see man-pages(7).
30 Title line
32 The first command in a man page (after comment lines, that is, lines
33 that start with .\") should be
34 .TH title section date source manual
36 For details of the arguments that should be supplied to the TH command,
38 see man-pages(7).
39 Note that BSD mdoc-formatted pages begin with the Dd command, not the
41 TH command.
42 Sections
44 Sections are started with .SH followed by the heading name.
45 The only mandatory heading is NAME, which should be the first section
47 and be followed on the next line by a one-line description of the pro‐
48 gram:
49 .SH NAME
51 item \- description
52 It is extremely important that this format is followed, and that there
54 is a backslash before the single dash which follows the item name.
55 This syntax is used by the mandb(8) program to create a database of
56 short descriptions for the whatis(1) and apropos(1) commands. (See
57 lexgrog(1) for further details on the syntax of the NAME section.)
58 For a list of other sections that might appear in a manual page, see
60 man-pages(7).
61 Fonts
63 The commands to select the type face are:
64 .B Bold
66 .BI Bold alternating with italics (especially useful for function spec‐
68 ifications)
69 .BR Bold alternating with Roman (especially useful for referring to
71 other manual pages)
72 .I Italics
74 .IB Italics alternating with bold
76 .IR Italics alternating with Roman
78 .RB Roman alternating with bold
80 .RI Roman alternating with italics
82 .SB Small alternating with bold
84 .SM Small (useful for acronyms)
86 Traditionally, each command can have up to six arguments, but the GNU
88 implementation removes this limitation (you might still want to limit
89 yourself to 6 arguments for portability's sake). Arguments are delim‐
90 ited by spaces. Double quotes can be used to specify an argument which
91 contains spaces. For the macros that produce alternating type faces,
92 the arguments will be printed next to each other without intervening
93 spaces, so that the .BR command can be used to specify a word in bold
94 followed by a mark of punctuation in Roman. If no arguments are given,
95 the command is applied to the following line of text.
96 Other macros and strings
98 Below are other relevant macros and predefined strings. Unless noted
99 otherwise, all macros cause a break (end the current line of text).
100 Many of these macros set or use the "prevailing indent". The "prevail‐
101 ing indent" value is set by any macro with the parameter i below;
102 macros may omit i in which case the current prevailing indent will be
103 used. As a result, successive indented paragraphs can use the same in‐
104 dent without respecifying the indent value. A normal (nonindented)
105 paragraph resets the prevailing indent value to its default value (0.5
106 inches). By default, a given indent is measured in ens; try to use ens
107 or ems as units for indents, since these will automatically adjust to
108 font size changes. The other key macro definitions are:
109 Normal paragraphs
111 .LP Same as .PP (begin a new paragraph).
112 .P Same as .PP (begin a new paragraph).
114 .PP Begin a new paragraph and reset prevailing indent.
116 Relative margin indent
118 .RS i Start relative margin indent: moves the left margin i to the
119 right (if i is omitted, the prevailing indent value is used).
120 A new prevailing indent is set to 0.5 inches. As a result,
121 all following paragraph(s) will be indented until the corre‐
122 sponding .RE.
123 .RE End relative margin indent and restores the previous value of
125 the prevailing indent.
126 Indented paragraph macros
128 .HP i Begin paragraph with a hanging indent (the first line of the
129 paragraph is at the left margin of normal paragraphs, and the
130 rest of the paragraph's lines are indented).
131 .IP x i Indented paragraph with optional hanging tag. If the tag x is
133 omitted, the entire following paragraph is indented by i. If
134 the tag x is provided, it is hung at the left margin before
135 the following indented paragraph (this is just like .TP except
136 the tag is included with the command instead of being on the
137 following line). If the tag is too long, the text after the
138 tag will be moved down to the next line (text will not be lost
139 or garbled). For bulleted lists, use this macro with \(bu
140 (bullet) or \(em (em dash) as the tag, and for numbered lists,
141 use the number or letter followed by a period as the tag; this
142 simplifies translation to other formats.
143 .TP i Begin paragraph with hanging tag. The tag is given on the
145 next line, but its results are like those of the .IP command.
146 Hypertext link macros
148 .UR url
149 Insert a hypertext link to the URI (URL) url, with all text up
150 to the following .UE macro as the link text.
151 .UE [trailer]
153 Terminate the link text of the preceding .UR macro, with the op‐
154 tional trailer (if present, usually a closing parenthesis and/or
155 end-of-sentence punctuation) immediately following. For non-
156 HTML output devices (e.g., man -Tutf8), the link text is fol‐
157 lowed by the URL in angle brackets; if there is no link text,
158 the URL is printed as its own link text, surrounded by angle
159 brackets. (Angle brackets may not be available on all output
160 devices.) For the HTML output device, the link text is hyper‐
161 linked to the URL; if there is no link text, the URL is printed
162 as its own link text.
163 These macros have been supported since GNU Troff 1.20 (2009-01-05) and
165 Heirloom Doctools Troff since 160217 (2016-02-17).
166 Miscellaneous macros
168 .DT Reset tabs to default tab values (every 0.5 inches); does not
169 cause a break.
170 .PD d Set inter-paragraph vertical distance to d (if omitted,
172 d=0.4v); does not cause a break.
173 .SS t Subheading t (like .SH, but used for a subsection inside a
175 section).
176 Predefined strings
178 The man package has the following predefined strings:
179 \*R Registration Symbol: ®
181 \*S Change to default font size
183 \*(Tm Trademark Symbol: ™
185 \*(lq Left angled double quote: “
187 \*(rq Right angled double quote: ”
189 Safe subset
191 Although technically man is a troff macro package, in reality a large
192 number of other tools process man page files that don't implement all
193 of troff's abilities. Thus, it's best to avoid some of troff's more
194 exotic abilities where possible to permit these other tools to work
195 correctly. Avoid using the various troff preprocessors (if you must,
196 go ahead and use tbl(1), but try to use the IP and TP commands instead
197 for two-column tables). Avoid using computations; most other tools
198 can't process them. Use simple commands that are easy to translate to
199 other formats. The following troff macros are believed to be safe
200 (though in many cases they will be ignored by translators): \", ., ad,
201 bp, br, ce, de, ds, el, ie, if, fi, ft, hy, ig, in, na, ne, nf, nh, ps,
202 so, sp, ti, tr.
203 You may also use many troff escape sequences (those sequences beginning
205 with \). When you need to include the backslash character as normal
206 text, use \e. Other sequences you may use, where x or xx are any char‐
207 acters and N is any digit, include: \', \`, \-, \., \", \%, \*x, \*(xx,
208 \(xx, \$N, \nx, \n(xx, \fx, and \f(xx. Avoid using the escape se‐
209 quences for drawing graphics.
210 Do not use the optional parameter for bp (break page). Use only posi‐
212 tive values for sp (vertical space). Don't define a macro (de) with
213 the same name as a macro in this or the mdoc macro package with a dif‐
214 ferent meaning; it's likely that such redefinitions will be ignored.
215 Every positive indent (in) should be paired with a matching negative
216 indent (although you should be using the RS and RE macros instead).
217 The condition test (if,ie) should only have 't' or 'n' as the condi‐
218 tion. Only translations (tr) that can be ignored should be used. Font
219 changes (ft and the \f escape sequence) should only have the values 1,
220 2, 3, 4, R, I, B, P, or CW (the ft command may also have no parame‐
221 ters).
222 If you use capabilities beyond these, check the results carefully on
224 several tools. Once you've confirmed that the additional capability is
225 safe, let the maintainer of this document know about the safe command
226 or sequence that should be added to this list.
227
229 /usr/share/groff/[*/]tmac/an.tmac
230 /usr/man/whatis
231
233 By all means include full URLs (or URIs) in the text itself; some tools
234 such as man2html(1) can automatically turn them into hypertext links.
235 You can also use the UR and UE macros to identify links to related in‐
236 formation. If you include URLs, use the full URL (e.g.,
237 ⟨http://www.kernel.org⟩) to ensure that tools can automatically find
238 the URLs.
239 Tools processing these files should open the file and examine the first
241 nonwhitespace character. A period (.) or single quote (') at the be‐
242 ginning of a line indicates a troff-based file (such as man or mdoc).
243 A left angle bracket (<) indicates an SGML/XML-based file (such as HTML
244 or Docbook). Anything else suggests simple ASCII text (e.g., a "cat‐
245 man" result).
246 Many man pages begin with '\" followed by a space and a list of charac‐
248 ters, indicating how the page is to be preprocessed. For portability's
249 sake to non-troff translators we recommend that you avoid using any‐
250 thing other than tbl(1), and Linux can detect that automatically. How‐
251 ever, you might want to include this information so your man page can
252 be handled by other (less capable) systems. Here are the definitions
253 of the preprocessors invoked by these characters:
254 e [22meqn(1)
256 g [22mgrap(1)
258 p [22mpic(1)
260 r [22mrefer(1)
262 t [22mtbl(1)
264 v [22mvgrind(1)
266
268 Most of the macros describe formatting (e.g., font type and spacing)
269 instead of marking semantic content (e.g., this text is a reference to
270 another page), compared to formats like mdoc and DocBook (even HTML has
271 more semantic markings). This situation makes it harder to vary the
272 man format for different media, to make the formatting consistent for a
273 given media, and to automatically insert cross-references. By sticking
274 to the safe subset described above, it should be easier to automate
275 transitioning to a different reference page format in the future.
276 The Sun macro TX is not implemented.
278
280 apropos(1), groff(1), lexgrog(1), man(1), man2html(1), whatis(1),
281 groff_man(7), groff_www(7), man-pages(7), mdoc(7)
282Linux man-pages 6.05 2023-07-29 man(7)