troff is a document processing system developed by AT&T for the Unix operating system. The troff typesetting system includes sets of commands called macros that are run before starting to process the document. These macros include setting up page headers and footers, defining new commands, and generally influencing how the output will be formatted. Under Linux all new manual pages should be marked up using the groff an.tmac package. The groff (GNU troff) software is a typesetting package which reads plain text mixed with formatting commands and produces formatted output.
Option #1: Use man command
The syntax is:
man ./file-name man $HOME/foo.1 man ~/foo.1 man /path/to/foo.1 man /path/to/your-man-page-here |
Option #2: Use nroff command
The nroff script emulates the nroff command using groff and the syntax is:
nroff -man foo.1 nroff -man $HOME/foo.1 nroff -man /path/to/foo.1 nroff -man /path/to/your-man-page-here |
Option #3: Set MANPATH shell variable
The man command searches the environment variable MANPATH. It is a colon-seperated list of directories like the PATH variable for man pages. To see current man page path, run:
$ manpath
Sample outputs:
/usr/local/share/man:/usr/share/man/overrides:/usr/share/man/en:/usr/share/man
man command uses a sophisticated method of finding manual page files, based on the invocation options and environment variables, the /etc/man.config configuration file, and some built in conventions and heuristics. If MANPATH is set, man uses it as the path to search for manual page files. It overrides the configuration file and the automatic search path, but is overridden by the -M invocation option.
Example
Type the following command
$ export MANPATH="$(manpath):/path/to/your/man1/"
$ man 1 foo
See also
- HowTo: Linux / UNIX Create a Manpage
- nroff, manpath, and man command man pages.
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