Editing Man page (section)

==History==
[[File:Screenshot of "Xman" program.png|thumb|''xman'', an early [[X11]] application for viewing manual pages]]
[[File:OpenBSD Manpages Section 8 Intro.png|thumb|[[OpenBSD]] section 8 intro man page, displaying in a text console]]

Before Unix (e.g., [[General Comprehensive Operating System|GCOS]]), documentation was printed pages, available on the premises to users (staff, students...), organized into steel binders, locked together in one monolithic steel reading rack, bolted to a table or counter, with pages organized for modular information updates, replacement, errata, and addenda. {{cn|date=January 2024}}

In the first two years of the [[history of Unix]], no documentation existed.<ref name="reader">{{cite tech report |first1=M. D. |last1=McIlroy |author-link1=Doug McIlroy |year=1987 |url=http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/reader.pdf |title=A Research Unix reader: annotated excerpts from the Programmer's Manual, 1971–1986 |series=CSTR |number=139 |institution=Bell Labs |access-date=2015-02-01 |archive-date=2017-11-11 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171111151817/http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/reader.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> The ''[http://man.cat-v.org/unix-1st/ Unix Programmer's Manual]'' was first published on November 3, 1971. The first actual man pages were written by [[Dennis Ritchie]] and [[Ken Thompson]] at the insistence{{fact|date=February 2020}} of their manager [[Douglas McIlroy|Doug McIlroy]] in 1971. Aside from the man pages, the ''Programmer's Manual'' also accumulated a set of short papers, some of them [[tutorial]]s (e.g. for general Unix usage, the [[C (programming language)|C]] programming language, and tools such as [[Yacc]]), and others more detailed descriptions of operating system features. The printed version of the manual initially fit into a single binder, but as of [[PWB/UNIX]] and the [[Version 7 Unix|7th Edition]] of [[Research Unix]], it was split into two volumes with the printed man pages forming Volume 1.<ref name="evolution">{{cite web |url=http://www.collyer.net/who/geoff/history.html |title=UNIX Evolution: 1975-1984 Part I - Diversity |last1=Darwin |first1=Ian |last2=Collyer |first2=Geoffrey |access-date=22 December 2012 |archive-date=17 July 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120717002523/http://www.collyer.net/who/geoff/history.html |url-status=live }} Originally published in ''Microsystems'' '''5'''(11), November 1984.</ref>

Later versions of the documentation imitated the first man pages' terseness. Ritchie added a "How to get started" section to the [[Version 3 Unix|Third Edition]] introduction, and [[Lorinda Cherry]] provided the "Purple Card" pocket reference for the [[Version 6 Unix|Sixth]] and [[Version 7 Unix|Seventh]] Editions.{{r|reader}} Versions of the software were named after the revision of the manual; the seventh edition of the ''Unix Programmer's Manual'', for example, came with the 7th Edition or Version 7 of Unix.<ref name="fiedler198310">{{cite news | url=https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1983-10/1983_10_BYTE_08-10_UNIX#page/n133/mode/2up | title=The Unix Tutorial / Part 3: Unix in the Microcomputer Marketplace | work=BYTE | date=October 1983 | access-date=30 January 2015 | author=Fiedler, Ryan | pages=132}}</ref>

For the [[Version 4 Unix|Fourth]] Edition the man pages were formatted using the [[troff]] typesetting package{{r|reader}} and its set of <code>-man</code> macros (which were completely revised between the Sixth and Seventh Editions of the ''Manual'',<ref name="evolution"/> but have since not drastically changed). At the time, the availability of online documentation through the manual page system was regarded as a great advance. To this day, virtually every Unix command line application comes with a man page, and many Unix users perceive a program's lack of man pages as a sign of low quality or incompleteness.  Indeed, some projects, such as [[Debian]], go out of their way to write man pages for programs lacking one. The modern descendants of [[Berkeley Software Distribution|4.4BSD]] also distribute man pages as one of the primary forms of system documentation (having replaced the old <code>-man</code> macros with the newer <code>-mdoc</code>).

There was a hidden [[Easter egg (media)|Easter egg]] in the man-db version of the man command that would cause the command to return "gimme gimme gimme" when run at 00:30 (a reference to the [[ABBA]] song [[Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)]]. It was introduced in 2011<ref name="git1">{{cite web|url=https://git.savannah.nongnu.org/cgit/man-db.git/commit/src/man.c?id=002a6339b1fe8f83f4808022a17e1aa379756d99|title=GIT commit 002a6339b1fe8f83f4808022a17e1aa379756d99|access-date=22 November 2017|archive-date=4 December 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171204003014/http://git.savannah.nongnu.org/cgit/man-db.git/commit/src/man.c?id=002a6339b1fe8f83f4808022a17e1aa379756d99|url-status=live}}</ref> but first restricted<ref name="git2">{{cite web|url=https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/man-db.git/commit/?id=84bde8d8a9a357bd372793d25746ac6b49480525|title=GIT commit 84bde8d8a9a357bd372793d25746ac6b49480525|access-date=22 November 2017|archive-date=5 September 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180905095817/https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/man-db.git/commit/?id=84bde8d8a9a357bd372793d25746ac6b49480525|url-status=live}}</ref> and then removed in 2017<ref>{{cite web|url=https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/man-db.git/commit/?id=b225d9e76fbb0a6a4539c0992fba88c83f0bd37e|title=GIT commit b225d9e76fbb0a6a4539c0992fba88c83f0bd37e|access-date=25 September 2018|archive-date=9 November 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201109034103/https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/man-db.git/commit/?id=b225d9e76fbb0a6a4539c0992fba88c83f0bd37e|url-status=live}}</ref> after finally being found.<ref name="stackexchange1">{{cite web|url=https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-man-print-gimme-gimme-gimme-at-0030|title="Why does man print "gimme gimme gimme" at 00:30?"|access-date=22 November 2017|archive-date=21 November 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171121230223/https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-man-print-gimme-gimme-gimme-at-0030|url-status=live}}</ref>