mandoc

mandoc is a free and open-source collection of tools for creating and displaying Unix manual pages. It serves as an alternative to the traditional troff-based toolchain often used for this purpose.

Overview

The primary function of mandoc is to parse, format, and display man pages in a variety of output formats, including:

• Terminal (using nroff-like formatting)
• HTML
• PostScript
• PDF

Key Features

• Strict Parsing: mandoc aims for strict adherence to the man page formatting standards, rejecting documents that deviate from the documented syntax. This can help catch errors in man page authoring.
• Security Focus: mandoc is designed with security in mind, aiming to avoid vulnerabilities common in older troff implementations.
• Portability: mandoc is written in portable C and aims to be easily compiled and run on a variety of Unix-like systems.
• Performance: mandoc strives for efficient parsing and rendering, even for large and complex man pages.
• Licensing: The mandoc project is typically licensed under permissive open-source licenses, such as the BSD license.

Components

The mandoc suite typically includes several command-line tools:

• mandoc: The main program for parsing and rendering man pages.
• man: A front-end to mandoc that searches for and displays man pages based on user input. It replaces the traditional man program in some systems.
• apropos: A tool for searching man page descriptions based on keywords.
• Other utility programs for tasks such as man page indexing and formatting.

Usage

Using mandoc typically involves calling it with the path to a man page source file as an argument. The output will be rendered according to the default output format (usually terminal formatting). The man program, when available, simplifies this process by automatically searching for and displaying man pages based on their name.

Alternatives

Alternatives to mandoc for creating and displaying man pages include:

• The traditional troff/nroff toolchain, often used in conjunction with groff.
• Other man page formatters and viewers.

Relationship to System Documentation

mandoc plays a crucial role in providing accessible documentation for Unix-like operating systems. It helps make system calls, libraries, and utilities understandable to developers and users.