Hi,

A while back, I complained to Ingo that MANPATH is heavy-handed: it 
doesn't allow us to modify the default search path (in, e.g., 
/etc/man.conf), but only override it.

He mentioned that in manpath(1) used on systems, MANPATH can modify 
instead of override by placemen to colons.  To wit:

MANPATH
     If $MANPATH is set, manpath displays its value rather than 
determining it on the fly. If $MANPATH is prefixed by a colon, then the 
value of the variable is appended to the list determined from the 
content of the configuration files. If the colon comes at the end of the 
value in the variable, then the determined list is appended to the 
content of the variable. If the value of the variable contains a double 
colon (::), then the determined list is inserted in the middle of the 
value, between the two colons.

The enclosed patch does just this for apropos(1), whatis(1), and 
catman(8) (which is also updated with -C like the others).  I modified 
the explanation above to be (I hope) a little clearer as to precedence.

Objections?

I personally like this, as on shared machines I usually have a 
scattering of utilities in my ~/bin and would love a ~/man with the 
manuals showing up by default (i.e., manually running mandocdb(8) to 
generate databases then setting MANPATH in my .profile).  It has always, 
always annoyed me that I can't do this.

Take care,

Kristaps