emerged w/ doc in USE.... Manpage installed as: /usr/share/man/man1/monotone-0.17.1.gz and the pdf files in the /usr/share/docs dir were all gzip(1)ed. (running: mv /usr/share/man/man1/monotone-0.17.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/monotone.1.gz did the right thing, so it is the right manpage, jus tthe wrong filename.)
Trick with manpage is OK, because there are slotted versions of monotone in portage now. It's because of filesystem conflict with previous versions (before 0.17), that are incompatibile, and you need both (pre 0.17 and 0.17) versions to migrate to new one. Simply 'man monotone-0.17' shows you manpage of monotone-0.17 binary. 'doc' flag is temporary disabled.
what Wojciech said. Same is going to happen with 0.18 so it seems.