.TH "MAN.CONF" "5" "December 28, 2016" "Debian" "File Formats Manual"
.nh
.if n .ad l
.SH "NAME"
\fBman.conf\fR
\- configuration file for man
.SH "DESCRIPTION"
This is the configuration file
for the
man(1),
apropos(1),
and
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
\(oq#\(cq,
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:
.TP 8n
\fBmanpath\fR \fIpath\fR
Override the default search
\fIpath\fR
for
man(1),
apropos(1),
and
makewhatis(8).
It can be used multiple times to specify multiple paths,
with the order determining the manual page search order.
.sp
Each path is a tree containing subdirectories
whose names consist of the strings
\(oqman\(cq
and/or
\(oqcat\(cq
followed by the names of sections, usually single digits.
The former are supposed to contain unformatted manual pages in
mdoc(7)
and/or
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
\(oq.0\(cq.
.sp
Creating a
mandoc.db(5)
database with
makewhatis(8)
in each directory configured with
\fBmanpath\fR
is recommended and necessary for
apropos(1)
to work, but not strictly required for
man(1).
.TP 8n
\fBoutput\fR \fIoption\fR [\fIvalue\fR]
Configure the default value of an output option.
These directives are overridden by the
\fB\-O\fR
command line options of the same names.
For details, see the
mandoc(1)
manual.
.sp
.TS
l l l.
.PD 0
.PP
\fIoption\fR	\fIvalue\fR	used by \fB\-T\fR	purpose			
.PP
\fBfragment\fR	none	\fBhtml\fR	print only body
.PP
\fBincludes\fR	string	\fBhtml\fR	path to header files
.PP
\fBindent\fR	integer	\fBascii\fR, \fButf8\fR	left margin
.PP
\fBman\fR	string	\fBhtml\fR	path for \&Xr links
.PP
\fBpaper\fR	string	\fBps\fR, \fBpdf\fR	paper size
.PP
\fBstyle\fR	string	\fBhtml\fR	CSS file
.PP
\fBwidth\fR	integer	\fBascii\fR, \fButf8\fR	right margin
.TE
.PD
.TP 8n
\fB_whatdb\fR \fIpath\fR\fB/whatis.db\fR
This directive provides the same functionality as
\fBmanpath\fR,
but using a historic and misleading syntax.
It is kept for backward compatibility for now,
but will eventually be removed.
.SH "FILES"
\fI/etc/man.conf\fR
.SH "EXAMPLES"
The following configuration file reproduces the defaults:
installing it is equivalent to not having a
\fBman.conf\fR
file at all.
.nf
.sp
.RS 6n
manpath /usr/share/man
manpath /usr/X11R6/man
manpath /usr/local/man
.RE
.fi
.SH "SEE ALSO"
apropos(1),
man(1),
makewhatis(8)
.SH "HISTORY"
A relatively complicated
\fBman.conf\fR
file format first appeared in
4.3BSD-Reno.
For
OpenBSD 5.8,
it was redesigned from scratch, aiming for simplicity.
.SH "AUTHORS"
Ingo Schwarze <\fIschwarze@openbsd.org\fR>