MAN(7) | Miscellaneous Information Manual | MAN(7) |
man - legacy formatting language for manual pages
The man language was the standard formatting language for AT&T UNIX manual pages from 1979 to 1989. Do not use it to write new manual pages: it is a purely presentational language and lacks support for semantic markup. Use the mdoc(7) language, instead.
In a man document, lines beginning with the control character ‘.’ are called “macro lines”. The first word is the macro name. It usually consists of two capital letters. For a list of portable macros, see MACRO OVERVIEW. The words following the macro name are arguments to the macro.
Lines not beginning with the control character are called “text lines”. They provide free-form text to be printed; the formatting of the text depends on the respective processing context:
.SH Macro lines change control state. Text lines are interpreted within the current state.
Many aspects of the basic syntax of the man language are based on the roff(7) language; see the LANGUAGE SYNTAX and MACRO SYNTAX sections in the roff(7) manual for details, in particular regarding comments, escape sequences, whitespace, and quoting.
Each man document starts with the TH macro specifying the document's name and section, followed by the NAME section formatted as follows:
.TH PROGNAME 1 1979-01-10 .SH NAME \fBprogname\fR \(en one line about what it does
This overview is sorted such that macros of similar purpose are listed together. Deprecated and non-portable macros are not included in the overview, but can be found in the alphabetical reference below.
TH | set the title: name section date [source [volume]] |
AT | display AT&T UNIX version in the page footer (<= 1 argument) |
UC | display BSD version in the page footer (<= 1 argument) |
SH | section header (one line) |
SS | subsection header (one line) |
PP | start an undecorated paragraph (no arguments) |
RS, RE | reset the left margin: [width] |
IP | indented paragraph: [head [width]] |
TP | tagged paragraph: [width] |
PD | set vertical paragraph distance: [height] |
in | additional indent: [width] |
B | boldface font |
I | italic font |
SB | small boldface font |
SM | small roman font |
BI | alternate between boldface and italic fonts |
BR | alternate between boldface and roman fonts |
IB | alternate between italic and boldface fonts |
IR | alternate between italic and roman fonts |
RB | alternate between roman and boldface fonts |
RI | alternate between roman and italic fonts |
This section is a canonical reference to all macros, arranged alphabetically. For the scoping of individual macros, see MACRO SYNTAX.
Example:
The width argument is a roff(7) scaling width. If specified, it's saved for later paragraph left margins; if unspecified, the saved or default width is used.
This macro is portable, but deprecated because it has no good representation in HTML output, usually ending up indistinguishable from PP.
The width argument is a roff(7) scaling width defining the left margin. It's saved for later paragraph left-margins; if unspecified, the saved or default width is used.
The head argument is used as a leading term, flushed to the left margin. This is useful for bulleted paragraphs and so on.
.MT address link description to be shown .ME
The key is usually a command-line flag and value its argument.
The height argument is a roff(7) scaling width. It defaults to 1v. If the unit is omitted, v is assumed.
This macro affects the spacing before any subsequent instances of HP, IP, LP, P, PP, SH, SS, SY, and TP.
The syntax is as follows:
Without an argument, the most recent RS block is closed out. If level is 1, all open RS blocks are closed out. Otherwise, level − 1 nested RS blocks remain open.
The width argument is a roff(7) scaling width. If not specified, the saved or default width is used.
See also RE.
.SY command arguments .YS
This is a non-standard GNU extension and very rarely used even in GNU manual pages. Formatting is similar to IP.
Conventionally, the document name is given in all caps. The section is usually a single digit, in a few cases followed by a letter. The recommended date format is YYYY-MM-DD as specified in the ISO-8601 standard; if the argument does not conform, it is printed verbatim. If the date is empty or not specified, the current date is used. The optional source string specifies the organisation providing the utility. When unspecified, mandoc(1) uses its -Ios argument. The volume string replaces the default volume title of the section.
Examples:
.TP [width] head \" one line body
The width argument is a roff(7) scaling width. If specified, it's saved for later paragraph left-margins; if unspecified, the saved or default width is used.
.UR uri link description to be shown .UE
If width is signed, the new offset is relative. Otherwise, it is absolute. This value is reset upon the next paragraph, section, or sub-section.
The man macros are classified by scope: line scope or block scope. Line macros are only scoped to the current line (and, in some situations, the subsequent line). Block macros are scoped to the current line and subsequent lines until closed by another block macro.
Line macros are generally scoped to the current line, with the body consisting of zero or more arguments. If a macro is scoped to the next line and the line arguments are empty, the next line, which must be text, is used instead. Thus:
.I foo
is equivalent to ‘.I foo’. If next-line macros are invoked consecutively, only the last is used. If a next-line macro is followed by a non-next-line macro, an error is raised.
The syntax is as follows:
.YO [body...] [body...]
Macro | Arguments | Scope | Notes |
AT | <=1 | current | |
B | n | next-line | |
BI | n | current | |
BR | n | current | |
DT | 0 | current | |
EE | 0 | current | GNU |
EX | 0 | current | GNU |
I | n | next-line | |
IB | n | current | |
IR | n | current | |
OP | >=1 | current | GNU |
PD | 1 | current | |
RB | n | current | |
RI | n | current | |
SB | n | next-line | |
SM | n | next-line | |
TH | >1, <6 | current | |
UC | <=1 | current | |
in | 1 | current | roff(7) |
Block macros comprise a head and body. As with in-line macros, the head is scoped to the current line and, in one circumstance, the next line (the next-line stipulations as in Line Macros apply here as well).
The syntax is as follows:
.YO [head...] [head...] [body...]
The closure of body scope may be to the section, where a macro is closed by SH; sub-section, closed by a section or SS; or paragraph, closed by a section, sub-section, HP, IP, LP, P, PP, RE, SY, or TP. No closure refers to an explicit block closing macro.
As a rule, block macros may not be nested; thus, calling a block macro while another block macro scope is open, and the open scope is not implicitly closed, is syntactically incorrect.
Macro | Arguments | Head Scope | Body Scope | Notes |
HP | <2 | current | paragraph | |
IP | <3 | current | paragraph | |
LP | 0 | current | paragraph | |
ME | 0 | none | none | GNU |
MT | 1 | current | to ME | GNU |
P | 0 | current | paragraph | |
PP | 0 | current | paragraph | |
RE | <=1 | current | none | |
RS | 1 | current | to RE | |
SH | >0 | next-line | section | |
SS | >0 | next-line | sub-section | |
SY | 1 | current | to YS | GNU |
TP | n | next-line | paragraph | |
TQ | n | next-line | paragraph | GNU |
UE | 0 | current | none | GNU |
UR | 1 | current | part | GNU |
YS | 0 | none | none | GNU |
If a block macro is next-line scoped, it may only be followed by in-line macros for decorating text.
In man documents, both Physical markup macros and roff(7) ‘\f’ font escape sequences can be used to choose fonts. In text lines, the effect of manual font selection by escape sequences only lasts until the next macro invocation; in macro lines, it only lasts until the end of the macro scope. Note that macros like BR open and close a font scope for each argument.
man(1), mandoc(1), eqn(7), mandoc_char(7), mdoc(7), roff(7), tbl(7)
The man language first appeared as a macro package for the roff typesetting system in Version 7 AT&T UNIX. It was later rewritten by James Clark as a macro package for groff. Eric S. Raymond wrote the extended man macros for groff in 2007. The stand-alone implementation that is part of the mandoc(1) utility written by Kristaps Dzonsons appeared in OpenBSD 4.6.
This man reference was written by Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv>.
March 2, 2019 | Debian |