System Administration Commands catman(1M)
NAME
catman - create the formatted files for the reference manual
SYNOPSIS
/usr/bin/catman [-c] [-n] [-p] [-t] [-w] [-M directory]
[-T macro-package] [sections]
DESCRIPTION
The catman utility creates the preformatted versions of the
on-line manual from the nroff(1) or sgml(5) input files.
This feature allows easy distribution of the preformatted
manual pages among a group of associated machines (for exam-
ple, with rdist(1)), since it makes the directories of pre-
formatted manual pages self-contained and independent of the
unformatted entries.
catman also creates the windex database file in the direc-
tories specified by the MANPATH or the -M option. The win-
dex database file is a three column list consisting of a
keyword, the reference page that the keyword points to, and
a line of text that describes the purpose of the utility or
interface documented on the reference page. Each keyword is
taken from the comma separated list of words on the NAME
line before the `-' (dash). The reference page that the key-
word points to is the first word on the NAME line. The text
after the - on the NAME line is the descriptive text in the
third column. The NAME line must be immediately preceded by
the page heading line created by the .TH macro (see NOTES
for required format).
Each manual page is examined and those whose preformatted
versions are missing or out of date are recreated. If any
changes are made, catman recreates the windex database.
If a manual page is a shadow page, that is, it sources
another manual page for its contents, a symbolic link is
made in the catx or fmtx directory to the appropriate pre-
formatted manual page.
Shadow files in an unformatted nroff source file are identi-
fied by the first line being of the form .so manx/yyy.x.
Shadow files in the SGML sources are identified by the
string SHADOWPAGE. The file entity declared in the shadow
file identifies the file to be sourced.
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System Administration Commands catman(1M)
OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
-c Create unformatted nroff source files in
the appropriate man subdirectories from
the SGML sources. This option will
overwrite any existing file in the man
directory of the same name as the SGML
file.
-n Do not create (or recreate) the windex
database. If the -n option is specified,
the windex database is not created and
the apropos, whatis, man -f, and man -k
commands will fail.
-p Print what would be done instead of
doing it.
-t Create troffed entries in the appropri-
ate fmt subdirectories instead of nroff-
ing into the cat subdirectories.
-w Only create the windex database that is
used by whatis(1) and the man(1) -f and
-k options. No manual reformatting is
done.
-M directory Update manual pages located in the
specified directory, (/usr/share/man by
default). If the -M option is speci-
fied, the directory argument must not
contain a `,' (comma), since a comma is
used to delineate section numbers. See
man(1).
-T macro-package Use macro-package in place of the stan-
dard manual page macros, ( man(5) by
default).
OPERANDS
The following operand is supported:
sections If there is one parameter not starting with a
`-', it is taken to be a space separated list of
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System Administration Commands catman(1M)
manual sections to be processed by catman. If
this operand is specified, only the manual sec-
tions in the list will be processed. For exam-
ple,
catman 1 2 3
only updates manual sections 1, 2, and 3. If
specific sections are not listed, all sections
in the man directory specified by the environ-
ment variable MANPATH are processed.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
TROF The name of the formatter to use when the -t flag
is given. If not set, troff(1) is used.
MANPATH A colon-separated list of directories that are
processed by catman and man(1). Each directory
can be followed by a comma-separated list of sec-
tions. If set, its value overrides /usr/share/man
as the default directory search path, and the
man.cf file as the default section search path.
The -M and -s flags, in turn, override these
values.
FILES
/usr/share/man default manual directory loca-
tion
/usr/share/man/man*/*.* raw nroff input files
/usr/share/man/sman*/*.* raw SGML input files
/usr/share/man/cat*/*.* preformatted nroffed manual
pages
/usr/share/man/fmt*/*.* preformatted troffed manual
pages
/usr/share/man/windex table of contents and keyword
database
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System Administration Commands catman(1M)
/usr/lib/makewhatis command script to make windex
database
/usr/share/lib/tmac/an default macro package
ATRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:
ATRIBUTE TYPE ATRIBUTE VALUE
Availability SUNWdoc
CSI Enabled
SEE ALSO
apropos(1), man(1), nroff(1), rdist(1), rm(1), troff(1),
whatis(1), attributes(5), man(5), sgml(5)
DIAGNOSTICS
man?/xxx.? (.so'ed from man?/yyy.?): No such file or direc-
tory
The file outside the parentheses is missing, and is
referred to by the file inside them.
target of .so in man?/xxx.? must be relative to /usr/man
catman only allows references to filenames that are
relative to the directory /usr/man.
opendir:man?: No such file or directory
A harmless warning message indicating that one of the
directories catman normally looks for is missing.
*.*: No such file or directory
A harmless warning message indicating catman came across
an empty directory.
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System Administration Commands catman(1M)
WARNINGS
If a user, who has previously run catman to install the cat*
directories, upgrades the operating system, the entire cat*
directory structure should be removed prior to running cat-
man. See rm(1).
Do not re-run catman to re-build the whatis database unless
the complete set of man* directories is present. catman
builds this windex file based on the man* directories.
NOTES
To generate a valid windex index file, catman has certain
requirements. Within the individual man page file, catman
requires two macro lines to have a specific format. These
are the .TH page heading line and the .SH NAME line.
The .TH macro requires at least the first three arguments,
that is, the filename, section number, and the date. The
.TH line starts off with the .TH macro, followed by a space,
the man page filename, a single space, the section number,
another single space, and the date. The date should appear
in double quotes and is specified as "day month year," with
the month always abbreviated to the first three letters
(Jan, Feb, Mar, and so forth).
The .SH NAME macro, also known as the NAME line, must
immediately follow the .TH line, with nothing in between
those lines. No font changes are permitted in the NAME line.
The NAME line is immediately followed by a line containing
the man page filename; then shadow page names, if applica-
ble, separated by commas; a dash; and a brief summary state-
ment. These elements should all be on one line; no carriage
returns are permitted.
An example of proper coding of these lines is:
.TH nismatch 1M "10 Apr 1998"
.SH NAME
nismatch, nisgrep \- utilities for searching NIS] tables
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