WTFM, again: Write The Fine Manual page - without having to learn ROFF

von W. Borgert (The Debian Project)

Freitag, 01.06.2007, Workshop 2 (ICC-B/R43), 17:00-18:00 Uhr

Manual pages are one of the reminders of UNIX V7 in 1979, that are still present in Debian. Manual pages are easy to access, self-contained, structured in a simple and well-known way and people are customarily asked to read them.

The Debian policy, chapter 12, mandates: "Each program, utility, and function should have an associated manual page included in the same package." It also suggests manual pages for all configuration files and for protocols and other auxiliary things.

The FHS (file hierarchy standard), describes the sections 1..8 of manual pages and where to store manual pages for different languages and character sets.

The layout of manual pages includes typical paragraphes, such as NAME, SYNOPSIS, DESCRIPTION, OPTIONS, EXAMPLES, KNOWN BUGS, FILES,

Über den Autor W. Borgert:

I am professional software developer in the telecommunication sector, specialised on protocol testing, for more than twelve years. I hold a degree in communications engineering/electrical engineering. A lot of my time I spend with Tango Argentino and Swing dancing.

I am using GNU/Linux since 1993, registered as user 7456. Starting with SLS 1.0.3 with kernel 0.99.12 (of 1993-08-15), copied on about thirty floppy disks, I switched to Slackware soon, and found finally to Debian GNU/Linux, distributed now on more than twenty CDs. Since 1998 I am a Debian developer.

Über den Autor ###NAME###:

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