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Re: What's the best (easiest) way to view man pages?
- To: "Tim Fisher" <tfisher at teamparadigm dot com>
- Subject: Re: What's the best (easiest) way to view man pages?
- From: Peter Dalgaard BSA <p dot dalgaard at biostat dot ku dot dk>
- Date: 01 Feb 1998 00:21:42 +0100
- Cc: <gnu-win32 at cygnus dot com>
- References: <001c01bd2e14$da720110$b2e2e3d0@caliban.teamparadigm.com>
"Tim Fisher" <tfisher@teamparadigm.com> writes:
> (it's almost impossible to read them that way). The groff package was
> supposed to contain a man implementation, but alas there was none.
> Suggestions?
>
> I would think man would be a high priority for CygWin. Emacs and vi be
> damned--we already have more text editors than we can handle under Win32. We
> need a man page viewer.
These are not in the same league... "man" is trivial to do, but
perhaps someone should take the time and put a version in a visible
place?
I'm getting a bit rusty on cygwin these days, mainly just listening in
on the conversations, but once upon a time I rolled up a simple shell
script doing essentially groff | less with the relevant
options stuffed in. It's somewhere in the mailing list archives, but I
can't locate it right now.
So was this more elaborate one, due to
"Charles S. Bowman" <sbowman@goodnet.com>:
Quote>>
#! /bin/sh
# Filename : man
# Author : Steve Bowman
# Created : 970323N
# Modified : 970724R
# crude - the following are known bugs/omissions:
# doesn't handle multiple arguments (use shift)
# doesn't break search when file found
# doesn't check extension match
# doesn't handle pager environment
# doesn't handle flag to alter search path without resetting
# MANPATH
# assumes groff and less are in PATH
if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
echo "Usage: man <manpage>"
exit 1
fi
if [ x$MANPATH = x ]; then
MANPATH=/usr/man:/usr/gnuwin32/b18/man
fi
for i in `echo $MANPATH | sed s/:/\ /g`; do
if [ -d $i ]; then
cd $i
if [ -f man?/$1.1 ]; then
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
groff -man -Tascii -Wall man?/$1.? | less
fi
fi
fi
done
exit 0
--- cut ---
And finally, to launch it I put a function in /etc/profile:
man () { sh /usr/bin/man $@; }
Since that version of bash wouldn't recognize /usr/bin/man as
executable. I don't know if that's still a problem or not.
<<endquote
--
O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard Blegdamsvej 3
c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics 2200 Cph. N
(*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard@biostat.ku.dk) FAX: (+45) 35327907
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