How to make "man" pages

[Fbsd1]

Matthew Seaman wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On 31/03/2010 08:54:25, Fbsd1 wrote:
>> OK i want to write a man page from scratch. So lets say i want to use
>> /usr/share/man/man2/jail.2.gz as my starting sample. How do I convert
>> this .gz file to a plain text file so I can edit it with ee?
> 
>    % cp /usr/share/man/man2/jail.2.gz .
>    % gunzip jail.2.gz
>    % mv jail.2 myname.2
>    % ee myname.2
> 
>> And how do
>> I turn the edited text file back in to a man page .gz file?
> 
> To compress the groff source:
> 
>    % gzip myname.2
> 
> To render the groff source as ascii text (what the man(1) command does):
> 
>    % groff -mdoc -Tascii myname.2 | less
> 
> or
> 
>    % gzcat myname.2.gz | groff -mdoc -Tascii | less
> 
> In general though, you should keep the man page source uncompressed
> while you're working on it and within the port; install it uncompressed
> and leave it to the ports machinery to compress it after installation.
> 
> 
> 

Getting closer but not there yet. Selected man jail to be my example of 
macro commands used. Did  [gunzip jail.8.gz] and now I have jail.8 file.
How to I convert this file to native macro file that I can edit with ee?

After editing the macro file how to I convert it to format ready to 
compress? I want to test it with the man command.

When I do groff -mdoc -Tascii jail.8  | less
I get loads of  this message "mdoc warning: Empty input line #xxx.
If I look at man jail screen output I see each message corresponds to a 
blank line in the man page. Is this suppose to happen?