bookman(1)

📦
version 1.7.1 · 11 versions
, in debian trixie, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 BOOKMAN(1) — bestie, we're making a whole BOOK 💖

okay so like. imagine taking a giant pile of man pages and turning them into an actual, literal, bound-and-printed book. that's bookman(1). she's giving librarian energy but make it ✨compiler✨. no cap.

✨ NAME ✨

bookman — Generate a book from man pages 📚🦋

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

bookman [-pPxn] [-o outfile] [-a author] [-d date] [-r release]
[-t title] [-v volume] [-c coverfile] [manfile]

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so here's the tea, bestie: bookman compiles a whole set of man page files — the ones you name with the manfile arguments — into one glorious book. iconic behavior, truly.

and if you don't hand her a single manfile? no problem, queen. she just reads your filenames straight from standard input. she's flexible like that. 💁‍♀️

👑 OPTIONS 👑

  • -p — PDF output format. yes bestie, glowy pdf book 💖
  • -P — Postscript output format. retro but make it slay.
  • -x — X11 previewing, using gxditview(1). look at your book before you commit, we love a vibe check 👀
  • -n — no format at all; the output is direct gtroff intermediate format. raw. unfiltered. main character energy.
  • -o outfile — output into the file outfile. the default is standard output, just fyi 🫶
  • -a author — sets the author, right there on the cover page. put your name on it, you earned it ✍️
  • -d date — sets the date on the cover page. 📅
  • -r release — sets the book name and the release on the cover page. two for one, we love a deal 💅
  • -t title — sets the title on the cover page. this is the fun one, go feral ✨
  • -v volume — specifies the name of the volume. 📖
  • -c coverfile — uses the file coverfile to generate the cover page, which means every page before the table of content. heads up though: coverfile must be in groff_ms(7) format, or it's not gonna work 😭

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

  • SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH — a Unix timestamp 🕰️ that gets used for the date in the header instead of the current date. for all my reproducible-build girlies out there 💜

🍓 EXAMPLE 🍓

say you wanna build a reference manual out of section 2 man pages (the syscall section, we stan), you literally just do:

$ cd /usr/share/man/man2
$ bookman -p -t 'Unix Reference Manual' * >book.pdf

and BOOM. book.pdf. ate. 🔥

💀 SEE ALSO 💀

man(1), mandoc(7), groff_ms(7), groff(1), troff(1), grops(1), gxditview(1), ps2pdf(1).

like, read them too bestie, iykyk 👑

🧚 AUTHOR 🧚

Marc Vertes <mvertes@free.fr> — the legend who made all of this possible 🫶

and that's the whole page, no cap 💖 this lil masterpiece came from txt2man-1.7.1, dated 09 May 2025. periodt. 🌸✨

📦 where this page comes from