Single source man pages? (Was: do you write or edit man pages?)

[Peter Kleczka <pkleczka -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

> 
> --- Christi <christi -at- sageinst -dot- COM> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm wondering if anyone writes or edits man pages
> as
> part of your job? 
[Snip] While they are generally ok; they are
> written in passive voice.

Christi

Your post reminded me that I think I saw
something about a program that extracted 
the text comments from code in order to 
create man pages.  Perhaps if you wanted 
to re-write man pages you might also 
have to re-write the comments in someones
code. Perhaps that would'nt sit well 
with the programmers, or perhaps it 
might look strange if the programming 
comments were written in active-first
person voice.

At any rate I was impressed when I 
learned that programmers might 
actually structure their comments 
so those same comments could also 
be used to generate man pages. 
Sounds like a great way to single 
source!

If any of you TechWrl's can point 
me to information about how 
programmers actually go about 
structuring their comments so that 
the comments can be extracted to 
produce the documentation, please 
let me know.

Thanks
Pete Kleczka
(pkleczka -at- yahoo -dot- com)

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