+.Em A utility without good documentation is of no utility at all .
+.\" PARAGRAPH
+.Pp
+A system component's documentation describes the utility of that
+component, whether it's a device driver, an executable or, most
+importantly, a game.
+.Pp
+This document serves as a tutorial to writing
+.Ux
+documentation
+.Pq Dq manuals .
+.\" SECTION
+.Sh ENVIRONMENT
+First, copy over the manual template from
+.Pa /usr/share/misc/mdoc.template
+into your source directory.
+.Pp
+.Dl % cp /usr/share/misc/mdoc.template \.
+.Pp
+.Em \&Do not
+start afresh or by copying another manual unless you know exactly what
+you're doing! If the template doesn't exist, bug your administrator.
+.\" SUBSECTION
+.Ss Section Numbering
+Find an appropriate section for your manual. There may exist multiple
+manual names per section, so be specific:
+.Pp
+.\" LIST
+.Bl -tag -width "XXXXXXXXXXXX" -offset indent -compact
+.It Em Section
+.Em Description
+.It 1
+operator utilities
+.It 2
+system calls
+.It 3, 3p, 3f
+programming libraries (C, Perl, Fortran)
+.It 5
+file and wire protocol formats
+.It 6
+games
+.It 7
+tutorials, documents and papers
+.It 8
+administrator utilities
+.It 9
+in-kernel routines
+.El
+.Pp
+If your manual falls into multiple categories, choose the most
+widely-used or, better, re-consider the topic of your manual to be more
+specific. You can list all manuals per section by invoking
+.Xr apropos 1 ,
+then provide the
+.Fl s
+flag to
+.Xr man 1
+to see the specific section manual (section 1, in this example):
+.\" DISPLAY
+.Bd -literal -offset indent
+% apropos myname
+myname (1) - utility description
+myname (3) - library description
+% man \-s 1 myname
+.Ed
+.\" SUBSECTION
+.Ss Naming
+Name your component. Be terse, erring on the side of clarity. Look for
+other manuals by that same name before committing:
+.Pp
+.Dl % apropos myname
+.Pp
+Manual files are named
+.Pa myname.mysection ,
+such as
+.Pa manuals.7
+for this document. Rename the template file:
+.Pp
+.Dl % mv mdoc.template myname.mysection
+.\" SUBSECTION
+.Ss Development Tools
+While writing, make sure that your manual is correctly structured:
+.Pp
+.Dl % mandoc \-Tlint \-Wall \-fstrict name.1
+.Pp
+The quick-fix feature of
+.Xr vim 1
+is useful for checking over many manuals:
+.Bd -literal -offset indent
+% mandoc \-Wall \-fstrict \-Tlint \-fign-errors \e
+ ./path/to/manuals/* 2>&1 > /tmp/mandoc.errs
+% vim -q /tmp/mandoc.errs
+.Ed
+.Pp
+You may spell-check your work as follows:
+.Pp
+.Dl % deroff name.1 | spell
+.Pp
+If
+.Xr ispell 1
+is installed, it has a special mode for manuals:
+.Pp
+.Dl % ispell \-n name.1
+.Pp
+Use
+.Xr cvs 1
+or
+.Xr rcs 1
+to version-control your work. If you wish the last check-in to effect
+your document's date, use the following RCS tag for the date macro:
+.Pp
+.Dl \&.Dd $Mdocdate: July 27 2009 $
+.\" SUBSECTION
+.Ss Viewing
+mdoc documents may be paged to your terminal with
+.Xr mandoc 1 .
+If you plan on distributing your work to systems without this tool,
+check it against
+.Xr groff 1 :
+.Bd -literal -offset indent
+% mandoc \-Wall name.1 2>&1 | less
+% groff -mandoc name.1 2>&1 | less
+.Ed
+.\" SUBSECTION
+.Ss Automation
+Consider adding your mdoc documents to
+.Xr make 1
+Makefiles in order to automatically check your input:
+.Bd -literal -offset indent
+\&.SUFFIXES: .1 .in
git.ckatri.com / mandoc.git / blobdiff