.\"	Id: man.conf.5,v 1.6 2018/10/02 14:56:47 schwarze Exp 
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.Dd October 2, 2018
.Dt MAN.CONF 5
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm man.conf
.Nd configuration file for man
.Sh DESCRIPTION
This is the configuration file
for the
.Xr man 1 ,
.Xr apropos 1 ,
and
.Xr makewhatis 8
utilities.
Its presence, and all directives, are optional.
.Pp
This file is an ASCII text file.
Leading whitespace on lines, lines starting with
.Sq # ,
and blank lines are ignored.
Words are separated by whitespace.
The first word on each line is the name of a configuration directive.
.Pp
The following directives are supported:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Ic manpath Ar path
Override the default search
.Ar path
for
.Xr man 1 ,
.Xr apropos 1 ,
and
.Xr makewhatis 8 .
It can be used multiple times to specify multiple paths,
with the order determining the manual page search order.
.Pp
Each path is a tree containing subdirectories
whose names consist of the strings
.Sq man
and/or
.Sq cat
followed by the names of sections, usually single digits.
The former are supposed to contain unformatted manual pages in
.Xr mdoc 7
and/or
.Xr man 7
format; file names should end with the name of the section
preceded by a dot.
The latter should contain preformatted manual pages;
file names should end with
.Ql .0 .
.Pp
Creating a
.Xr mandoc.db 5
database with
.Xr makewhatis 8
in each directory configured with
.Ic manpath
is recommended and necessary for
.Xr apropos 1
to work, and also for
.Xr man 1
on operating systems like
.Ox
that install each manual page with only one file name in the file system,
even if it documents multiple utilities or functions.
.It Ic output Ar option Op Ar value
Configure the default value of an output option.
These directives are overridden by the
.Fl O
command line options of the same names.
For details, see the
.Xr mandoc 1
manual.
.Pp
.Bl -column fragment integer "ascii, utf8" -compact
.It Ar option   Ta Ar value Ta used by Fl T Ta purpose
.It Ta Ta Ta
.It Ic fragment Ta none     Ta Cm html Ta print only body
.It Ic includes Ta string   Ta Cm html Ta path to header files
.It Ic indent   Ta integer  Ta Cm ascii , utf8 Ta left margin
.It Ic man      Ta string   Ta Cm html Ta path for \&Xr links
.It Ic paper    Ta string   Ta Cm ps , pdf Ta paper size
.It Ic style    Ta string   Ta Cm html Ta CSS file
.It Ic toc      Ta none     Ta Cm html Ta print table of contents
.It Ic width    Ta integer  Ta Cm ascii , utf8 Ta right margin
.El
.It Ic _whatdb Ar path Ns Cm /whatis.db
This directive provides the same functionality as
.Ic manpath ,
but using a historic and misleading syntax.
It is kept for backward compatibility for now,
but will eventually be removed.
.El
.Sh FILES
.Pa /etc/man.conf
.Sh EXAMPLES
The following configuration file reproduces the defaults:
installing it is equivalent to not having a
.Nm
file at all.
.Bd -literal -offset indent
manpath /usr/share/man
manpath /usr/X11R6/man
manpath /usr/local/man
.Ed
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr apropos 1 ,
.Xr man 1 ,
.Xr makewhatis 8
.Sh HISTORY
A relatively complicated
.Nm
file format first appeared in
.Bx 4.3 Reno .
For
.Ox 5.8 ,
it was redesigned from scratch, aiming for simplicity.
.Sh AUTHORS
.An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org