Are the MDoc macros, commonly used to create BSD manpages, commonly available on non-BSD systems (such as Ubuntu and other GNU Linux distros)? Is it safe to design manpages using them when writing cross-platform documentation?
Is the mdoc macro set available on non-BSD systems by default?
man;bsd;compatibility
I think you can probably use these macros without problems.I looked on 3 sample OS's I have: ubuntu 14.04, debian 7.8, fedora 21, and theyall use the groff package to include the mandoc macros (though not the mandoc command)and to provide a man page on them: mdoc(7).I checked if there were any man pages installed actually using these macros with:find /usr/share/man/man1/ -type f |while read f;do if gzip -d <$f | fgrep '.Dd'; then echo $f; fi; doneand found several files, eg ftp(1), ssh-agent(1), ncal(1).  I tried the mancommand on these, and they showed up correctly.So, if most systems have groff installed they can read these man pages.  Anyone got a mac osx to try on?