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MAN

Section: Environments, Tables, and Troff Macros (7)
Index Return to Main Contents

BSD mandoc

NAME

man - legacy formatting language for manual pages

DESCRIPTION

The man language was the standard formatting language for AT&T System 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 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 Sx 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 fre-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 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 document starts with the TH macro specifying the document's name and section, followed by the Sx NAME section formatted as follows:

.TH PROGNAME 1 197-0-10
.SH NAME
fBprognamefR (en one line about what it does

MACRO OVERVIEW

This overview is sorted such that macros of similar purpose are listed together. Deprecated and no-portable macros are not included in the overview, but can be found in the alphabetical reference below.

Page header and footer met-data

TH Ta set the title: name section date [source [volume ] ]
AT Ta display AT&T UNIX version in the page footer (<= 1 argument)
UC Ta display BSD version in the page footer (<= 1 argument)

Sections and paragraphs

SH Ta section header (one line)
SS Ta subsection header (one line)
PP Ta start an undecorated paragraph (no arguments)
RS , RE Ta reset the left margin: [width ]
IP Ta indented paragraph: [head [width ] ]
TP Ta tagged paragraph: [width ]
PD Ta set vertical paragraph distance: [height ]
in Ta additional indent: [width ]

Physical markup

B Ta boldface font
I Ta italic font
SB Ta small boldface font
SM Ta small roman font
BI Ta alternate between boldface and italic fonts
BR Ta alternate between boldface and roman fonts
IB Ta alternate between italic and boldface fonts
IR Ta alternate between italic and roman fonts
RB Ta alternate between roman and boldface fonts
RI Ta alternate between roman and italic fonts

MACRO REFERENCE

This section is a canonical reference to all macros, arranged alphabetically. For the scoping of individual macros, see Sx MACRO SYNTAX .

AT

Sets the volume for the footer for compatibility with man pages from AT&T System releases. The optional arguments specify which release it is from. This macro is an extension that first appeared in BSD 4.3

B

Text is rendered in bold face.

BI

Text is rendered alternately in bold face and italic. Thus, `.BI this word and that' causes `this' and `and' to render in bold face, while `word' and `that' render in italics. Whitespace between arguments is omitted in output.

Example:

.BI bold italic bold italic

BR

Text is rendered alternately in bold face and roman (the default font). Whitespace between arguments is omitted in output. See also BI

DT

Restore the default tabulator positions. They are at intervals of 0.5 inches. This has no effect unless the tabulator positions were changed with the roff(7) ta request.

EE

This is a no-standard Version 9 AT&T System extension later adopted by GNU. In mandoc(1), it does the same as the roff(7) fi request (switch to fill mode).

EX

This is a no-standard Version 9 AT&T System extension later adopted by GNU. In mandoc(1), it does the same as the roff(7) nf request (switch to n-fill mode).

HP

Begin a paragraph whose initial output line is lef-justified, but subsequent output lines are indented, with the following syntax:

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

I

Text is rendered in italics.

IB

Text is rendered alternately in italics and bold face. Whitespace between arguments is omitted in output. See also BI

IP

Begin an indented paragraph with the following syntax:

The width argument is a roff(7) scaling width defining the left margin. It's saved for later paragraph lef-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.

IR

Text is rendered alternately in italics and roman (the default font). Whitespace between arguments is omitted in output. See also BI

LP

A synonym for PP

ME

End a mailto block started with MT This is a no-standard GNU extension.

MT

Begin a mailto block. This is a no-standard GNU extension. It has the following syntax:

. MT address


link description to be shown
. ME

OP

Optional comman-line argument. This is a no-standard DWB extension. It has the following syntax:

The key is usually a comman-line flag and value its argument.

P

This synonym for PP is an AT&T System III extension later adopted by BSD 4.3

PD

Specify the vertical space to be inserted before each new paragraph.
The syntax is as follows:

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

PP

Begin an undecorated paragraph. The scope of a paragraph is closed by a subsequent paragraph, su-section, section, or end of file. The saved paragraph lef-margin width is reset to the default.

RB

Text is rendered alternately in roman (the default font) and bold face. Whitespace between arguments is omitted in output. See also BI

RE

Explicitly close out the scope of a prior RS The default left margin is restored to the state before that RS invocation.

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.

RI

Text is rendered alternately in roman (the default font) and italics. Whitespace between arguments is omitted in output. See also BI

RS

Temporarily reset the default left margin. This has the following syntax:

The width argument is a roff(7) scaling width. If not specified, the saved or default width is used.

MACRO SYNTAX

The 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

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 nex-line macros are invoked consecutively, only the last is used. If a nex-line macro is followed by a no-nex-line macro, an error is raised.

The syntax is as follows:

.YO lBbody...rB
lBbody...rB

Macro Ta Arguments Ta Scope Ta Notes
AT Ta <=1 Ta current Ta
B Ta n Ta nex-line Ta
BI Ta n Ta current Ta
BR Ta n Ta current Ta
DT Ta 0 Ta current Ta
EE Ta 0 Ta current Ta Version 9 AT&T System
EX Ta 0 Ta current Ta Version 9 AT&T System
I Ta n Ta nex-line Ta
IB Ta n Ta current Ta
IR Ta n Ta current Ta
OP Ta >=1 Ta current Ta DWB
PD Ta 1 Ta current Ta
RB Ta n Ta current Ta
RI Ta n Ta current Ta
SB Ta n Ta nex-line Ta
SM Ta n Ta nex-line Ta
TH Ta >1, <6 Ta current Ta
UC Ta <=1 Ta current Ta
in Ta 1 Ta current Ta roff(7)

Block Macros

Block macros comprise a head and body. As with i-line macros, the head is scoped to the current line and, in one circumstance, the next line (the nex-line stipulations as in Sx Line Macros apply here as well).

The syntax is as follows:

.YO lBhead...rB
lBhead...rB
lBbody...rB

The closure of body scope may be to the section, where a macro is closed by SH su-section, closed by a section or SS or paragraph, closed by a section, su-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 Ta Arguments Ta Head Scope Ta Body Scope Ta Notes
HP Ta <2 Ta current Ta paragraph Ta
IP Ta <3 Ta current Ta paragraph Ta
LP Ta 0 Ta current Ta paragraph Ta
ME Ta 0 Ta none Ta none Ta GNU
MT Ta 1 Ta current Ta to ME Ta GNU
P Ta 0 Ta current Ta paragraph Ta
PP Ta 0 Ta current Ta paragraph Ta
RE Ta <=1 Ta current Ta none Ta
RS Ta 1 Ta current Ta to RE Ta
SH Ta >0 Ta nex-line Ta section Ta
SS Ta >0 Ta nex-line Ta su-section Ta
SY Ta 1 Ta current Ta to YS Ta GNU
TP Ta n Ta nex-line Ta paragraph Ta
TQ Ta n Ta nex-line Ta paragraph Ta GNU
UE Ta 0 Ta current Ta none Ta GNU
UR Ta 1 Ta current Ta part Ta GNU
YS Ta 0 Ta none Ta none Ta GNU

If a block macro is nex-line scoped, it may only be followed by i-line macros for decorating text.

Font handling

In documents, both Sx 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.

HISTORY

The language first appeared as a macro package for the roff typesetting system in AT&T System v7 .

The stan-alone implementation that is part of the mandoc(1) utility first appeared in Ox 4.6 .

AUTHORS

An -nosplit An Douglas McIlroy Aq Mt m.douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu designed and implemented the original version of these macros, wrote the original version of this manual page, and was the first to use them when he edited volume 1 of the AT&T System v7 manual pages.

An James Clark later rewrote the macros for groff. An Eric S. Raymond Aq Mt esr@thyrsus.com and An Werner Lemberg Aq Mt wl@gnu.org added the extended macros to groff in 2007.

The mandoc(1) program and this reference were written by An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv .