Re: UNIX manual page development tool

[Megan Golding <mgolding -at- secureworks -dot- net>]

Max wants a tool to use for developing UNIX manual pages.

Max,

If you're up for a little learning, I'd suggest writing man pages with
DocBook and translating them to man (with readily available scripts).
Beware: if you've never worked with DocBook, there is a significant
infestment in setup time to get you editing environment working.

DocBook: http://www.docbook.org/ 
HOWTO Install:
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/DocBook-Install/index.html

Whether you're using Windows, Linux, or UNIX, tools for creating
documents with DocBook are available. Cygwin is the most commonly used
in Windows.

Cygwin:http://www.cygwin.com

I recently wrote man pages with DocBook and found the process very easy.
I used a template for the basic manpage parts (synopsis, options, etc.)
and filled in the blanks with my information.

Sample: http://www.docbook.org/tdg/en/html/ch02.html#making-refentry

As is so typical in Open Source projects, there are several ways to
convert your document from DocBook to man (which is troff markup). I
used docbook2man, which is part of the docbook-utils package on my Linux
machine.

docbook-utils: http://www.dulug.duke.edu/~mark/docbook-utils/

So, I start with a document written in DocBook, run docbook2man, and end
up with a man file.

Please let me know if you have specific questions about this solution.

Regards,
Megan Golding
Technical Writer
SecureWorks, Inc.




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