What viewer to use for viewing man pages with syntax highlighting?

linuxs64 · 11-30-2010, 03:17 PM

Is there a utility or method enabling easier navigation (keyword search, hyperlink etc) or color/syntax highlighting when viewing man pages? Please share. TY.

GrapefruiTgirl · 11-30-2010, 03:22 PM

You might find this link interesting, though there may be one or more other ways to do it too.

http://linuxtidbits.wordpress.com/20...for-man-pages/

(Assumes `less` is the pager in use)

wargus · 11-30-2010, 03:45 PM

I've added following to my .bashrc

Code:

export PAGER=most;

assuming most is installed. Results in red (switches) and green (arguments) keywords.
(at least in Slackware)

dugan · 11-30-2010, 04:25 PM

Konqueror.

e.g. "man:bash"

tronayne · 12-01-2010, 08:01 AM

And there's the good old-fashioned way

Code:

man -t name | gv -

When you use -t, the output is PostScript.

Hope this helps some.

Ramurd · 12-01-2010, 10:06 AM

that assumes you actually have X. But if you're stuck with a console-only, try "most" as your pager: export PAGER=most
Next time you open a man page, it will come in pretty colors.

if you like it (try it out first, I'd say) you can put the option in your bashrc / .profile / ...

linuxs64 · 12-01-2010, 11:03 PM

thanks for the suggestions, I've tried all of them and settled on PAGER=most in terminal, and konqueror in X. There's another method using vim as pager, via add-on scripts not shipped by default with slackware. whichman is another package to use for searching keywords in man pages, while w3m (text console www browser similar to lynx) can be used to view man pages in terminal as well.

Keith Hedger · 12-06-2010, 02:59 PM

I've recently written a script to convert man pages into html format that can be used by the devhelp reader ( or a normal browser ) you an get it here > http://keithhedger.freetzi.com/zips/makemanpages.tgz make sure you read the readme this is very experimental ( and SLOooow ) so feed back would be appreciated.