pud-man(7)                      MISCELLANEOUS                       pud-man(7)



  NAME
      pud-man - A description of the Portable Unix Documentation Language for
      writing manual pages

  DESCRIPTION
      This document describes the Portable Unix Documentation (PUD) manual
      page mini-language. PUD-man is built on top of the macro interpreter
      zoem. A PUD document is generally well-structured, relatively free of
      formatting statements, compact to write and easily extendable. It can be
      converted to both troff and html, for viewing in terminals and browsers.
      High quality Postscript and plain text formats can be derived from the
      troff output.

      Write your own manual pages by copying the example page buzzz.azm and
      modifying it to your needs. If you are documenting foo, the usual
      approach is to create foo.azm, and from that create foo.1 and foo.html
      as follows:

         zoem -i foo -d html
         zoem -i foo -d html
         zoem -i foo -d roff -o foo.1
         zoem -i foo -d roff -o foo.1

      This generates files foo.html and foo.1.  Each device is run twice to be
      certain that references are found and linked. PostScript and text
      versions can be made from foo.1 as follows:

         groff -man foo.1 > foo.ps
         groff -t -e -mandoc -Tascii foo.1 | col -bx > foo.txt

      Note though that foo.1 does not use any groff specific extensions; it
      should be acceptable input to ancient roffs as well.  Exceptions to this
      imply a bug in the PUD man macros.

      You are advised to start by inspecting a template manual page such as
      buzzz.azm. The current manual page documents the facilities and macros
      made available by the PUD manual language by importing the file man.zmm.
      The start of a manual page thus typically looks like this:

      \import{man.zmm}

         \begin{pud::man}{

            {name}{pud-man}
            {html_title}{The PUD manual page mini-language}
            {author}{Stijn van Dongen}
            {section}{7}
            {year}{2009}
            {month}{Jan}
            {day}{15}
            {tag}{1.002}
            {stamp}{09-015}
            {defstyle}{long}
            {synstyle}{long}

         }

         \${html}{\"pud::man::maketoc"}

         \sec{name}{NAME}
         \NAME{pud-man}{A description of the Portable Unix Documentation Language for writing manual pages}

         \sec{description}{DESCRIPTION}
         \par{
          .....
          .....}

      The PUD manual page macro package automatically imports a set of generic
      macros from the pud-base and pud-ref packages. The pud-base(7) and pud-
      ref(7) manual pages document those macros, which are also essential for
      writing manual pages. The most important are

     i)  The itemize environment (used as \begin{itemize}[{options}] ...
         \end{itemize}) and its associated macros \item#1, \items#1, \item
         \itemskip, \intermezzo, and others.

    ii)  The font style/appearance macros \bf#1, \it#1, \tt#1, \v#1, the font
         size macros \ftinc#2 and \ftdec#2.

   iii)  The paragraph mark \par#1 (required for each paragraph).

    iv)  The verbatim macros \verbatim#1 and \verbatix#1.

     v)  The link macros \httpref#1, \sibref#2, \iref#2, \lref#2, \aref#2.

    vi)  In pud-ref(7) the pair of \reference#2 and \refer#1.

      For the authorative listing consult the pud-base manual page. The
      listing above includes a silly demonstration of some itemize features
      such as alignment and automatic numbering. Read the Zoem User Manual for
      a better understanding of zoem macro packages and the design of zoem.

  MACROS
      The \$man key in the pud::man environment can be used to set the
      centered heading found in all UNIX roff manual pages. If not set, a
      heading is derived from the \$section macro. Below is the listing of
      default headers. It can probably be improved.

            1     USER COMMANDS
            2     SYSTEM CALLS
            3     LIBRARY CALLS
            4     SPECIAL FILES
            5     FILE FORMATS
            6     GAMES
            7     MACRO PACKAGES
            8     SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION
            9     KERNEL ROUTINES

      The last textual item in a manual page must be the macro
      \"man::postamble".  See the example page buzzz.azm.
      \sec#2
      \secref#1
        Start a section, refer to a section. The first argument of \sec#2 is
        the anchor for that section, the second argument is the title. The
        macro \secref#1 takes an anchor and outputs the title of the
        associated section.

        The NAME section should be written like the example below, taken from
        the zoem interpreter manual.


        \sec{name}{NAME}
        \NAME{zoem}{interpreter for the Zoem macro/programming language.}

        Usage of the NAME macro ensures that the troff output complies with
        the format expected by apropos.

      \defopt#2
      \defopt#3
      \defkvp#3
        Write entry in the options section. typical usage is within an \item#1
        macro. For all macros the first argument is the option being
        described, and the last argument is a short string describing the
        option. This string is printed in case the macro \"man::defstyle" is
        set to long. The macro \defopt#3 is used for options taking arguments;
        the second argument is the name describing the argument.  The macro
        \defkvp#3 is used for long options of the form --mode=str, which you
        would enter as \defkvp{mode}{str}{set foo mode}. Long options of the
        form --verbose are simply entered using \defopt#2.

      \optref#2
        Refer to an option. The first argument is the option, the second
        argument is the text associated with the link. This text will indeed
        be linking in html, but nothing special will happen in troff - the
        text is printed as is.

      \synoptopt#2
      \synoptopt#3
      \synreqopt#2
      \synreqopt#3
        Write entries in the synopsis section. This assumes that somewhere an
        option was created using one of the defopt family members described
        below.

        For all 'syn' options the first argument is simply the option itself.
        From this argument the anchor is reconstructed that was created by one
        of the defopt macros. The last argument is always a short string
        describing the option. It depends on the style chosen, i.e. whether
        \"man::synstyle" is long or short, whether this string shows up or
        not. The macros in this group that take two arguments describe unary
        options that take no argument. The macros taking three arguments
        describe options that do take an argument.

        Here is an example from the zoem manual page:

        \synoptopt{--trace}{trace mode, default}
        \synoptopt{--trace-all-long}{long trace mode}
        \synoptopt{--trace-all-short}{short trace mode}
        \synoptopt{--trace-regex}{trace regexes}
        \synoptopt{--show-tracebits}{show trace bits}
        \synoptopt{-trace}{k}{trace mode, explicit}
        \synoptopt{--stats}{show symbol table stats after run}


      \"man::synstyle"
      \"man::defstyle"
        Before importing the manual macros, set these to your prefered style.
        Each of these should be set either to short or long.

      \genopt#1
      \genopt#2
      \genarg#1
      \useopt#1
      \useopt#2
      \usearg#1
      \genkvp#2
      \usekvp#2
        These are for creating a consistent style when refering to options.
        One is free to disregard these altogether. They are meant as
        convenience, but some may find the extra typing annoying.

        The idea is that the 'gen' macros are used when generic mention is
        made of an option and possibly its argument.  The 'use' macros are
        used when explicit usage is mentioned.  An example is the following:

          Modes can be chosen using -mode str where str is any of small,
          medium, or large. Use -mode small if your hardware is outdated.

          Use --mileage=str to set the mileage, e.g. --mileage=high or
          --mileage=astronomical.

  SEE ALSO
      The pud manual page gives an overview of PUD.



  pud-man 1.002, 09-149             29 May 2009                       pud-man(7)
