the secret of "man"

[xaol]

At one time I downloaded a package that allowed me to do man -H <packagename> and it would open the man in default browser, making it much easier to read, scroll, and search. But it may have only worked for the conky man and a few others. They had to have an entry somewhere for it to work. I thought this was a common thing, and I was just the last to know. Now I can't remember what the package was or how to get it again. I love the mans and use them all the time, but some are written better than others.

that sounds like it might be the package troffcvt. after installing it in an mx 23 virtual machine,

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man -Hfirefox man

opens the man manual page in firefox. as does --html=firefox in place of -Hfirefox. it worked for the few different pages i tried (ls, parted, man).

[DukeComposed]

I love the mans and use them all the time, but some are written better than others.

Please remember that man pages were a pretty revolutionary concept when they were created. Instead of an actual big, thick paper operator's manual, which came with a computer same as you'd get when you buy an automobile, you could get the same information represented electronically, through a consistent "man" interface.

man pages were designed to be familiar to the people who were used to only previously having the paper version. After a couple of decades, you just get used to them.

Also be aware that "info" was created to modernize man pages and bring them into the 1990s. The format of an info page is decidedly HTML-ier. I imagine in a few years we'll have a tutorial system that divulges the important bits about how to use "ps" in under 60 seconds and is formatted like a TikTok video.

[Greg Brannon]

@xaol, post #11

This is a great tip! I was struggling with 'man rsync' just yesterday and could have used this since the man pages are so long and detailed, yet unsearchable in a terminal session. I had to do some research to get man -H to work, and this is what I learned:

Your post mentioned that a package had to be install to use the man -H option. My research pointed to the package 'groff' as being required. I tried man -H several different ways -- none worked with unhelpful errors -- before stumbling on the requirement for groff. Once groff was installed, the man -H option works great!

Thanks for mentioning!

Greg.

[trawglodyte]

that sounds like it might be the package troffcvt. after installing it in an mx 23 virtual machine,

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man -Hfirefox man

opens the man manual page in firefox. as does --html=firefox in place of -Hfirefox. it worked for the few different pages i tried (ls, parted, man).

troffcvt it is! and -Hfirefox is great to know too because somehow my www-browser default got changed. I definitely need to make a note of this and add it to my must haves. Thanks.

p.s. troffcvt includes groff and a few others as depends. On my machine I had tried groff and few of the others while trying to remember, but troffcvt was the one I was missing that got it working.

[trawglodyte]

man -H <command> was opening with elinks text browser. man -Hfirefox <command> was opening with firefox, but I'm too lazy to type -Hfirefox all the time. export BROWSER=firefox made firefox the default CLI www-browser, so now I can just do man -H <command> to get a man in firefox. I think you can export BROWSER=google-chrome-stable or whatever browser you want.

Somebody told me if I knew how to properly use a terminal I wouldn't have to open the man's in a browser to read, search, and scroll while I was figuring this out. lol, oh well. I'm happy for now!

[MXRobo]

Is this page relevant?
https://us-browse.startpage.com/av/prox ... b0f227dec0

Reason for odd URL & JUST FYI: I can't access distrowatch when using the VPN unless I use Startpage's Anonymous View

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man -k crontab

[DukeComposed]

This is a great tip! I was struggling with 'man rsync' just yesterday and could have used this since the man pages are so long and detailed, yet unsearchable in a terminal session.

The '/' key starts a string search. Type the search string and press Enter.

Somebody told me if I knew how to properly use a terminal I wouldn't have to open the man's in a browser to read, search, and scroll while I was figuring this out. lol, oh well. I'm happy for now!

Using the terminal is an art, kind of like calligraphy. It shouldn't be too upsetting not being great at using it these days for the same reason people aren't upset that they don't know how to churn butter or make their own powdered wigs, either. 40 years ago terminals were all there were and so things like pressing '/' to search or moving around with h, j, k, and l were necessary skills to have to function. I'm happier that you've shown me that man content can be piped to Firefox more than I'd be sad you weren't stuck in an 80x25 monochrome window.