Man Page Links: It's Not the Man Pages, It's the Readers

2025-04-09

Common complaints about man pages include the lack of inter-page links and reflow on window resize. However, the mdoc(7) format used by man pages actually supports these features, using macros like `.Xr` and `.Sx` for creating links. The problem lies with man page readers (like `man(1)` combined with `less(1)`), which fail to implement this functionality. We need better man page readers that natively support links and reflow, rather than simply formatting the man page and piping it to `less(1)`.

Development document readers