Manual Syntax and Structure

In the last part, I introduced some mdoc language syntax by way of example. We covered Commands and Functions. In this part, I'll study the structure of the UNIX manual itself.

Historically, the syntax and structure of mdoc derive from roff, a text processing language predating even UNIX. mdoc was in fact a bundle of macros expanded by a formatter into roff — not a separate language. Only recently has mdoc been mature enough to consider as a standalone language.

The general syntax of roff (and thus mdoc) can be traced to the RUNOFF command from the mid-sixties! The conventions of section names and manual categories were formalised later, in the early seventies, with the Version 1 AT&T UNIX Programmer's Manual.

Although the focus of this book is obviously on mdoc, a great deal of its idiosyncrasies derive from roff, so we'll spend some time discussing seemingly-unnecessary complexity in the context of general text processing.

I reiterate that this is not a canonical mdoc reference: mdoc is not a standard, and varies in subtle ways across formatters and operating systems. In this part, I'll discuss only the portable parts of mdoc.

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