Hugo • 4/9/2025

Man pages are great, man readers are the problem

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The article explains that the mdoc(7) and man(7) formats for Unix manual pages semantically support features like cross-references (links) and text reflow. The core issue is that terminal-based readers like man(1) and less(1) do not render these features, unlike HTML conversions. It argues for the development of better, native terminal pager software to utilize these existing capabilities.

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#Man Pages #Mdoc Format #Terminal Tools
Man pages are great, man readers are the problem

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