man page organization (-more-)

[Chris Torek]

In article <1070 at hydra.gatech.EDU> rh26 at prism.gatech.EDU (Howard,Robert L)
writes:				[odd sort of first name, has a comma in it :-)]
>What are the manl and mann directories under /usr/man for?  (I understand
>the structure of the man[1-8] directories)  The system under consideration
>is a Sun 386i running SunOS 4.0.1.

The manual organisation in SunOS 2.*, 3.*, and 4.0.* is based on that
in 4.2BSD.  The scheme was as follows:

	/usr/man		top level directory
		/man[1-8ln]	n/troff source for manuals
		/cat[1-8ln]	preformatted editions

The `sections' 1-8, l, and n were for:

		1		commands
		2		system calls
		3		library routines
		4		devices (/dev)
		5		file formats
		6		games
		7		miscellaneous
		8		maintenance and administrative commands
		l		local commands (/usr/local/*)
		n		`new' commands (/usr/new/*)

This scheme is not a particularly good one and is largely being
abandoned.  Besides the problem of separating the manual n/troff
sources from the programs and files they document, its major
failing is that it lumps `local' and `new' into single categories.
What we here at UMCP CSD are using (which is not to say that
Berkeley are doing quite the same thing%) is this:

	/usr/src/{bin,lib,...,man}/*...	n/troff sources for manuals
	/usr/man/man[1-8]	n/troff slaves
	/usr/man/cat[1-8]	preformatted entries
	/usr/local/man/man[1-8]	n/troff slaves for local things
	/usr/local/man/cat[1-8]	preformatted entries

(/usr/new does not fit, but /usr/new is an abomination.  If it
must exist, it should be called /usr/contrib, or something similar,
and should be arranged like / (bin, lib, libdata, text, ...).

-----
% In particular, Berkeley have eliminated /usr/man/man[1-8] and
  /etc/catman entirely.  This makes printing a complete edition of
  the manuals somewhat difficult. . . .
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris