Re: [Groff] Is there a good man page style guide somewhere?

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Clarke,

> At that time, cp, ln, and mv were all on the same man page, and the
> DESCRIPTION line said:
> 
> cp, mv, ln - copy, move, or link files
> 
> Run that through a permuted index generator (ptx), and you get a
> hideous mess.  Look in that mess for "rename a file", and you get the
> rename(2) system call.  Now how is a user supposed to figure out that
> you use the mv command to rename a file at the keyboard from that
> mess?

I think it's worth differentiating between what AT&T may have shipped
and what came out of Bell Labs.  The 7th Ed. manual I linked to earlier
has individual man pages for cp, mv, and ln and mv(1) has the word
`rename' in its ptx-line.

    $ egrep '(cp|mv|ln) +\\-' man1.bun
    -cp \- copy
    -ln  \-  make a link
    -mv  \-  move or rename files and directories

I agree with your point about capitalising commands though.  That
always seemed wrong to me.  e. e. cummings isn't capitalised at the
start of a sentence.  cp shouldn't be either.  Cp would be a different
command.

Cheers,


Ralph.