3 .\" Copyright (c) 1990, 1991, John W. Eaton.
5 .\" You may distribute under the terms of the GNU General Public
6 .\" License as specified in the README file that comes with the man 1.0
10 .\" jwe@che.utexas.edu
11 .\" Department of Chemical Engineering
12 .\" The University of Texas at Austin
13 .\" Austin, Texas 78712
22 .Nd format and display the on-line manual pages
26 .Op Fl m Ar arch Ns Op : Ns Ar machine
37 formats and displays the on-line manual pages.
43 environment variables, so you can have
44 your own set(s) of personal man pages and choose whatever program you
45 like to display the formatted pages.
50 only looks in that section of the manual.
51 You may also specify the
52 order to search the sections for entries and which preprocessors to
53 run on the source files via command line options or environment
55 If enabled by the system administrator, formatted man
56 pages will also be compressed with the
58 command to save space.
60 The options are as follows:
61 .Bl -tag -width ".Fl P Ar pager"
63 Specify an alternate manpath.
68 (which is built into the
71 to determine the path to search.
72 This option overrides the
76 Specify which pager to use.
81 This option overrides the
85 List is a colon separated list of manual sections to search.
86 This option overrides the
92 will exit after displaying the first manual page it
94 Using this option forces
96 to display all the manual pages
101 Do not actually display the man pages, but do print gobs of debugging
107 Print a help message and exit.
111 .It Fl m Ar arch Ns Op : Ns Ar machine
112 As some manual pages are intended only for specific
113 architectures and machine types,
115 searches any subdirectories,
116 with the same name as the current machine type and architecture,
117 in every directory which it searches.
118 Machine specific areas are checked before architecture specific areas,
119 and architecture specific areas are checked before general areas.
122 the following subdirectories will be searched for section 8
124 .Pa man8/pc98, man8/i386 ,
128 The current machine type may be overridden using this option
129 or by setting the environment variable
131 to the name of a specific machine.
132 The current architecture may be overridden using this option
133 or by setting the environment variable
135 to the name of a specific architecture.
136 This option overrides the
140 environment variables.
143 component, if omitted, defaults to
146 Look for original, non-localized manpages only.
150 searches for a localized manpage
151 in a set of locale subdirectories of each
155 Locale name is taken from the first of three environment variables
156 with a nonempty value:
157 .Ev LC_ALL , LC_CTYPE ,
160 in the specified order.
162 If the value could not be determined, or is not a valid locale name,
163 then only non-localized manpage will be looked up.
167 will search in the following subdirectories, in the order of precedence:
169 .Bl -item -offset indent -compact
172 .Pa <lang> _ <country> . <charset>
174 .Pa <lang> . <charset>
181 .Dq Li de_DE.ISO8859-1
184 will search in the following subdirectories of the
188 .Bl -item -offset indent -compact
190 .Pa /usr/share/man/de_DE.ISO8859-1
192 .Pa /usr/share/man/de.ISO8859-1
194 .Pa /usr/share/man/en.ISO8859-1
198 if the search of localized manpage fails,
199 it will be looked up in the default
203 Specify the sequence of preprocessors to run before
207 Not all installations will have a full set of preprocessors.
208 Some of the preprocessors and the letters used to designate them are:
215 This option overrides the
217 environment variable.
221 to format the manual page, passing the output to stdout.
222 The default output format of
224 is Postscript, but see the manual page of
226 for ways to pick an alternate format.
228 Depending on the selected format and the availability of printing
230 may need to be passed through some filter or another before being
233 Do not actually display the man pages, but do print the location(s) of
234 the files that would be formatted or displayed.
237 .Bl -tag -width ".Ev MACHINE_ARCH"
238 .It Ev LC_ALL , LC_CTYPE , LANG
239 These variables specify the preferred language for manual pages.
246 is set, its value is used to override the current machine type
247 when searching machine specific subdirectories.
251 is set, its value is used to override the current architecture
252 when searching architecture specific subdirectories.
256 is set, its value is used as the path to search for manual pages.
260 is set, its value is used to determine the set of preprocessors run
265 By default, pages are passed through
266 the table preprocessor
273 is set, its value is used to determine which manual sections to search.
277 is set, its value is used as the name of the program to use to display
285 Normally, to look at the relevant manpage information for
291 However, when referring to a specific section of the manual,
308 option only works if the
310 program is installed.