On Wed, 5 Jan 2005, Richard Rauch wrote:

> What methods are there to avoid clashes between section-title
> specifications of man pages?
>
> As I read it, only the system admin can set a man-page
> section in /etc/man.conf, and the set defined is fairly
> small.

A regular user can also choose their own custom man.conf and also define
a custom MANPATH.

>  What if, e.g., one has two packages, both in pkgsrc
> say, that provide functions of the same name?

Sometimes, we rename one of the manpages (as installed by pkgsrc).

>  Let us suppose
> that the distributions both try to install their man pages,
> but other than some (or a lot of) common man-page names, there
> is no conflict between the two.
>
> Is this a good time to use the (somewhat mysterious) "3f"
> man page section?  Or is the "f" supposed to designate
> something like Fortran?

Yes the "f" is for Fortan.

I don't think it is a good idea to use a uncommon man page section,
because it may not be seen by default.

It is interesting to note that some sections are commonly available:
section "n" for newer versions of man pages and section "l" for local
versions of man pages.

Did you have a particular man page your were thinking about?

 Jeremy C. Reed

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