Re: Man Pages

["Bergerson, Carl A" <Carl -dot- Bergerson -at- UNISYS -dot- COM>]

John,

I still owe you the Word 1 styles. I have to go through the archives at
home to get them.

But let me try to explain how manual pages work on most Unix systems.

When the Unix system is first installed, most if not all,  the man
pages are stored in nroff/troff source files. When users request the
display of  man pages they are run through the nroff formatter with the
an macro page supplied as a parameter. The output is redirected to both
the requester's display and to a file. Subsequent requests for the same
man page are provided from the newly formatted file rather than calling
the formatter each time. (Implementation dependent, the list of compiled
files may be pruned from time to time.) When the system sends the man
page to the requester's terminal it usually uses the terminfo facility
which does not have a parameter for italics (at least termcap, its
predecessor, didn't), so it uses some form of video highlighting. That's
probably what you thought were hyperlinks.

That said, regardless of where you originate the file, you must include
the nroff tags for the file to display properly. Formatting the file in
Word or Frame and then saving as text causes the loss of all formatting
and you still have to edit the text file to add the nroff tags. I find
that creating the file on the Unix box is far simpler, but I'm pretty
adept at vi. Most Unix implementations come vi and emacs and probably
other text editors as well. Your Unix system administrator can give you
help in this area. (If you have access to SCO Xenix or SCO Unix, they
used to have a couple of files that took you through basic vi operations
as you read the files in vi-very effective. Otherwise pick up the
O'Reilly book for the editor you want to use.)

Al Unix implementations I am aware of come with a spell checker and
another utility called deroff which strips nroff tags from a file. Run
the file through deroff, pipe the output through spell, and then
redirect that output to a file or the printer. If I remember, the
command line looks something like this:

deroff mydoc | spell > error.log

I hope this helps.

Carl Bergerson
Mission Viejo
Product Information
carl -dot- bergerson -at- unisys -dot- com

> ----------
> From:         John Posada[SMTP:posada -at- FAXSAV -dot- COM]
> Sent:         Friday, January 23, 1998 2:33 PM
> To:   TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
> Subject:      Re: man Pages
>
> Chris...the part that worries me is that I recall seeing hyperlinks in
> =
> some man pages that appeared on the screen in reverse video. How do I
> =
> create that effect and how to I create the hyperlink? Was I imagining
> =
> something?
>
> John
>
> >Hey, guys...
> >
> >The time has come for me to figure out how to create set of UNIX man
> =
> =3D
> >pages.
> >
> >Unfortunately, I don't know where to even start.
>
> I did man pages for UNIX:  I wrote them in MS Word on the PC platform
> --
> saved them to .txt.  I then filtered them to from DOS to UNIX.<<<<<
>
>
> Are there specifics such as line length or is that taken care of when
> =
> its run through the UNIX text editor.  I also assume that when I open
> =
> and save in vi, that the PC end of line/end of file will convert to
> the =
> appropriate UNIX end of line/end of file characters ?
>
> >>>>>I checked the files via XEDIT -- VI is fine too -- to make sure
> the
> translation was ok.  Your UNIX guru *should* know that ASCII/text
> files
> need to run through a filter for proper used [on both sides of the
> platform].
>
> My main thought in the exercise was to keep the files in a format
> where =
> I
> could edit/spell check easy.
>
> You should check with the UNIX guru for name specifications of your =
> files.
> The program will "look" for the file in a specific location.
>
> [I used "Exodus" as my UNIX gateway.]<<<<<
>
> I use CuteFTP for my FTPing
>
> >>>>>However, you can ftp the files in and do the same.
>
> It was easier than using VI and hoping the spelling gawds were nice.
>
> John Posada, Technical Writer (and proud of the title)
> The world's premier Internet fax service company: The FaxSav Global =
> Network
> -work http://www.faxsav.com      -personal http://www.tdandw.com
> -work mailto:posada -at- faxsav -dot- com   -personal mailto:john -at- tdandw -dot- com
> -work phone: 732-906-2000 X2296  -home phone: 732-291-7811
> My opinions are mine, and neither you nor my company can take credit
> for =
> them.
>

Carl Bergerson
Mission Viejo
Product Information
carl -dot- bergerson -at- unisys -dot- com