mansun(5) Standards, Environments, and Macros mansun(5)NAMEmansun - macros to format Reference Manual pages
SYNOPSIS
nroff -mansun filename...
troff -mansun filename...
DESCRIPTION
These macros are used to lay out the reference pages in this manual.
Note: if filename contains format input for a preprocessor, the com‐
mands shown above must be piped through the appropriate preprocessor.
This is handled automatically by man(1). See the ``Conventions'' sec‐
tion.
Any text argument t may be zero to six words. Quotes may be used to
include SPACE characters in a "word". If text is empty, the special
treatment is applied to the next input line with text to be printed. In
this way .I may be used to italicize a whole line, or .SB may be used
to make small bold letters.
A prevailing indent distance is remembered between successive indented
paragraphs, and is reset to default value upon reaching a non-indented
paragraph. Default units for indents i are ens.
Type font and size are reset to default values before each paragraph,
and after processing font and size setting macros.
These strings are predefined by -mansun:
\*R `®', `(Reg)' in nroff.
\*S Change to default type size.
Requests
* n.t.l. = next text line; p.i. = prevailing indent
Request Cause If no Explanation
Break Argument
.B t no t=n.t.l.* Text is in bold font.
.BI t no t=n.t.l. Join words, alternating bold and italic.
.BR t no t=n.t.l. Join words, alternating bold and Roman.
.DT no .5i 1i... Restore default tabs.
.HP i yes i=p.i.* Begin paragraph with hanging indent. Set
prevailing indent to i.
.I t no t=n.t.l. Text is italic.
.IB t no t=n.t.l. Join words, alternating italic and bold.
.IP x i yes x="" Same as .TP with tag x.
.IR t no t=n.t.l. Join words, alternating italic and
Roman.
.IX t no - Index macro, for SunSoft internal use.
.LP yes - Begin left-aligned paragraph. Set pre‐
vailing indent to .5i.
.P yes - Same as .LP.
.PD d no d=.4v Set vertical distance between para‐
graphs.
.PP yes - Same as .LP.
.RE yes - End of relative indent. Restores pre‐
vailing indent.
.RB t no t=n.t.l. Join words, alternating Roman and bold.
.RI t no t=n.t.l. Join words, alternating Roman and
italic.
.RS i yes i=p.i. Start relative indent, increase indent
by i. Sets prevailing indent to .5i for
nested indents.
.SB t no - Reduce size of text by 1 point, make
text bold.
.SH t yes - Section Heading.
.SM t no t=n.t.l. Reduce size of text by 1 point.
.SS t yes t=n.t.l. Section Subheading.
.TH n s d f m yes - Begin reference page n, of of section s;
d is the date of the most recent change.
If present, f is the left page footer; m
is the main page (center) header. Sets
prevailing indent and tabs to .5i.
.TP i yes i=p.i. Begin indented paragraph, with the tag
given on the next text line. Set pre‐
vailing indent to i.
.TX t p no - Resolve the title abbreviation t; join
to punctuation mark (or text) p.
Conventions
When formatting a manual page, mansun examines the first line to deter‐
mine whether it requires special processing. For example a first line
consisting of:
'\" t
indicates that the manual page must be run through the tbl(1) pre‐
processor.
A typical manual page for a command or function is laid out as follows:
.TH title [1-8] The name of the command or function, which serves
as the title of the manual page. This is followed
by the number of the section in which it appears.
.SH NAME The name, or list of names, by which the command
is called, followed by a dash and then a one-line
summary of the action performed. All in Roman
font, this section contains no troff(1) commands
or escapes, and no macro requests. It is used to
generate the windex database, which is used by the
whatis(1) command.
.SH SYNOPSIS
Commands: The syntax of the command and its
arguments, as typed on the command
line. When in boldface, a word must
be typed exactly as printed. When in
italics, a word can be replaced with
an argument that you supply. Refer‐
ences to bold or italicized items are
not capitalized in other sections,
even when they begin a sentence.
Syntactic symbols appear in Roman
face:
[ ] An argument, when sur‐
rounded by brackets is
optional.
| Arguments separated by a
vertical bar are exclu‐
sive. You can supply
only one item from such
a list.
... Arguments followed by an
ellipsis can be
repeated. When an ellip‐
sis follows a bracketed
set, the expression
within the brackets can
be repeated.
Functions: If required, the data declaration,
or #include directive, is shown
first, followed by the function
declaration. Otherwise, the function
declaration is shown.
.SH DESCRIPTION A narrative overview of the command or function's
external behavior. This includes how it interacts
with files or data, and how it handles the stan‐
dard input, standard output and standard error.
Internals and implementation details are normally
omitted. This section attempts to provide a suc‐
cinct overview in answer to the question, "what
does it do?"
Literal text from the synopsis appears in constant
width, as do literal filenames and references to
items that appear elsewhere in the reference man‐
uals. Arguments are italicized.
If a command interprets either subcommands or an
input grammar, its command interface or input
grammar is normally described in a USAGE section,
which follows the OPTIONS section. The DESCRIP‐
TION section only describes the behavior of the
command itself, not that of subcommands.
.SH OPTIONS The list of options along with a description of
how each affects the command's operation.
.SH FILES A list of files associated with the command or
function.
.SH SEE ALSO A comma-separated list of related manual pages,
followed by references to other published materi‐
als.
.SH DIAGNOSTICS A list of diagnostic messages and an explanation
of each.
.SH BUGS A description of limitations, known defects, and
possible problems associated with the command or
function.
FILES
/usr/share/lib/tmac/ansun
/usr/share/man/windex
SEE ALSOman(1), nroff(1), troff(1), whatis(1)
Dale Dougherty and Tim O'Reilly, Unix Text Processing
SunOS 5.11 11 Jun 1992 mansun(5)
