Re: Conventions for FreeBSD manual pages

Graham Perrin wrote:
> Please: does FreeBSD have anything like the Linux manual page for
> conventions?
> 
> <https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/man-pages.7.html>
> 
> I can't find one.

See mdoc(7).

> Background
> ==========
> 
> For years, I assumed that SEE ALSO sections were disorderly.
> 
> For example:
> 
> * expecting a–z (alphabetical order)
> 
> * finding ne, sy, se, at et cetera (disorderly) under
> <https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=tuning&sektion=7&manpath=FreeBSD#SEE_ALSO>
> 
> 
> Today I discovered that there is, at least for Linux, a convention to sort:
> 
> * first, by the section number (secondary)
> 
> * second, by the name of the page, which appears first.
> 
> I do see some logic to this, however – without first knowing the
> convention – I never found it helpful. The apparent disorder was unhelpful.
> 
> Whenever I look for a named thing, in a long string of names, with the
> intention of clicking (a link): I expect alphabetical order, by name.

I don't see a question here, so I'll just say that I find it helpful,
different sections are there to describe completely different things
(commands, functions, kernel modules, formats), so grouping by section
makes a lot of sense to me.