The manpages are generated by processing *.m4 files using m4.
Roff cheatsheet:
Inline formatting ("escapes"):
\fB - set bold
\fI - set italic (shows as underlined when output on console)
\fR - set regular (i.e. unset bold & italic)
Line commands ("requests"):
.\" - begins a comment line (may be used for spacing in source document)
.LP - begin a new normal paragraph
.HP - begin a hanging paragraph
.TP - begin an indented paragraph with unindented label (first line)
.IP \(bu - indented paragraph with bullet point
.sp - vertical space (i.e. blank line without breaking paragraph)
Gotchas:
* Sentences should always end at the end of a line (this affects spacing in output).
* hyphens which are actually dashes (part of a setting name for example) should be
preceded by a backslash ("\-").
* A blank line doesn't technically start a new paragraph (but does produce a blank line in the output).
It's probably better to use ".sp" instead. Use .LP/.HP/.TP for example to start a paragraph.
For synopsis:
.PD 0 -- no space between paragraphs
.nh -- disable hyphenation
.HP -- begin hanging paragraph
(command goes here)
.HP
(next command variant)
.PD -- default paragraph spacing
.hy -- default hyphenation