ManDrake is a native man page editor for macOS with features such as syntax highlighting, live mandoc syntax validation and a live-updating rendered preview of the man page during editing. It can also export man pages as HTML.
Long story short, many years ago I was sick of writing man pages in an endless cycle of edit-view, edit-view so I decided to do something about it and created this editor. It's a bit rough around the edges, but it works really well for me. Perhaps it will also be of some use to you.
ManDrake is free, open source software released under a BSD license. If you find it useful, feel free to make a donation.
- ⬇ Download ManDrake 3.3.1 (~3.6 MB, ARM/Intel 64-bit, macOS 13.0 or later, Developer ID signed and notarized)
To learn more about the mandoc man page format:
man mdocor read this page.
If you want to build ManDrake yourself, you need the following components/tools:
- Apple's Xcode
- macOS SDK (13.0 or later)
Do I look all rancid and clotted? You look at me, Jack. Eh? Look, eh? And I drink a lot of water, you know. I'm what you might call a water man, Jack - that's what I am. And I can swear to you, my boy, swear to you, that there's nothing wrong with my bodily fluids. Not a thing, Jackie.
Here's Group Captain Lionel Mandrake from Kubrick's wonderful Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb in the intimidating company of Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper.
Copyright (c) 2004-2025, Sveinbjorn Thordarson <sveinbjorn@sveinbjorn.org>
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
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Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
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