How do I write man pages? [closed]
Here are a few web pages that will help get you started:
- Creating and Formatting Man Pages
- Creating Your Own MAN Page
- Create Your own Man Page
- How to Write a Man Page
- What you need to know to write man pages
A couple of useful tools:
- txt2man
- help2man
There are tools for writing man pages that bypass troff formatting. manpages are a small, well delimited language and easy to target.
Two popular tools are:
- xmltoman, a small and well structured xml language that can generate manpages and html. It is used by Lennart Poettering's projects, syrep and pulseaudio for example.
- asciidoc, used by git for example.
yodl and zoem seem to be other nice formats in this space.
All in all I'd recommend xmltoman because it's a very manpage specific dsl that will guide you closely.
I have written a rather extensive blog article about the topic, which you can find here:
http://2buntu.com/articles/1034/how-to-write-a-manpage/
I do not know of any IDEs or tutorials, but you can start by copying an existing man page and modify it to suit your needs.
For a reference of the groff language with MAN macros (which is what is used by a man page) consult the groff_man man page, or read it online here
Take a look at the ronn project. Its a markdown to man page generator. It can also generate the man pages in html, like this.
I like the idea of writing all my software documentation in one format. Markdown IMO is a good choice