.\" Man page for catman
.\"
.\" Copyright (C), 1994, 1995, Graeme W. Wilford. (Wilf.)
.\"
.\" You may distribute under the terms of the GNU General Public
.\" License as specified in the file COPYING that comes with the
.\" man_db distribution.
.\"
.\" Sat Dec 10 14:17:29 GMT 1994  Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk) 
.\" 
.TH catman 8 "July 12th, 1995" "2.3.10" "Manual pager utils"
.SH NAME
catman \- create or update the pre-formatted manual pages
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B catman 
.RB [\| \-dhV \|] 
.RB [\| \-M 
.IR path \|] 
.RI [\| section \|]
\&.\|.\|.
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B catman
is used to create an up to date set of pre-formatted manual pages known as
cat pages. 
Cat pages are generally much faster to display than the original
manual pages, but require extra storage space. The decision to
support cat pages is that of the local administrator, who must provide
suitable directories to contain them.

The options available to
.B catman
are the manual page hierarchies and sections to pre-format. The
default hierarchies are those specified as `global' in the man_db 
configuration file and the default sections are either 
the colon delimited contents of the environment variable
.RB $ MANSECT
or the standard set compiled into 
.B man
if 
.RB $ MANSECT
is undefined. Supplying
.B catman
with a set of whitespace delimited section names will override both of
the above.

.B catman
makes use of the
.B index
database cache associated with each hierarchy to determine which files 
need to be formatted.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.B \-d, \-\-debug
Print debugging information.
.TP
.BI \-M\  path ,\ \-\-manpath= path
Specify an alternate colon delimited manual page hierarchy search path. 
By default, this is all paths indicated as `global'
in the man_db configuration file.
.TP
.B \-h, \-\-help
Print a help message and exit.
.TP
.B \-V, \-\-version
Display version and author information.
.SH ENVIRONMENT
.TP
.B MANSECT
If
.RB $ MANSECT
is set, its value is a colon delimited list of sections and it is used to
determine which manual sections to search and in what order.
.TP
.B MANPATH
If
.RB $ MANPATH
is set, its value is interpreted as the colon delimited, manual page
hierarchy search path to use.
.SH FILES
.TP
.I /usr/local/etc/man_db.config
man_db configuration file.
.TP
.I /usr/man/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
A traditional global
.I index
database cache.
.TP
.I /var/catman/index.(bt|db|dir|pag)
An alternate or FSSTND
compliant global
.I index
database cache.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR man (1),
.BR manpath (5), 
.BR mandb (8).
.SH AUTHOR
Wilf. (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk)