🚀 go-pugleaf

Submitted-by: norcott_bill@tandem.com (Bill Norcott)

In article <1k9b4bINN643@ftp.UU.NET>, mclemore@edsel.eng.gtefsd.com (Ken McLemore) writes:
> i'm looking for a POSIX convention for manual pages (Section 1,2,3,4,5,8)
> and 1003.1 alludes to 1003.2 as possibly supplying the manual page
> conventions.  does 1003.2 address this issue and what is the current status
> of 1003.2 (eg. draft, being published, etc) ?

The man utility says: "The man utility shall write information about
each of the name operands.  If name is the name of a standard
utility, man shall at a minimum write a message describing the
syntax used by the standard utility, its options, and operands.  If
more information is available, the man utility shall provide it in
an implementation-defined manner".

The format of the text is implementation defined, i.e. there are no
"manual page conventions" other than for minimum content.  It is 
also interesting that man does not have to provide descriptions of
system calls or anything else that is not a POSIX.2 utility.

I believe that POSIX.2 Draft 12 has already been balloted and approved
and that it is officially an IEEE standard.
-- 
Bill Norcott			GUARDIAN POSIX project
Tandem Computers, Inc.		
10600 N. Tantau Avenue		PHONE:  (408) 285-3253
Cupertino, CA   95014		EMAIL: norcott_bill@tandem.com

Volume-Number: Volume 30, Number 49