So, you use the command line. And, you’d like to look at a command’s manual page.
Wouldn’t it be handy to open the page into another window, nicely formatted, all typeset and neat? That is exactly what this little script will do.
I keep my personal scripts and executables in ~/bin (the bin directory inside my home directory). My ~.profile file in Ubuntu already had that in the path, if ~/bin exists.
If needed, create ~/bin:
mkdir ~/bin
Create a shell script called ~/bin/gman with these lines:
#!/bin/sh -e man -t $1 | ps2pdf - > "/tmp/$1.man.pdf" gnome-open "/tmp/$1.man.pdf"
Make the shell script executable with:
chmod +x ~/bin/gman
If needed, exit your shell and open it back up again. This would be to ensure that ~/bin is detected and added to your PATH.
Then, to use it, just type gman and the command you are interested in, ie. grep.
gman grep
This will show you a beautiful, formatted document:
Interesting stuff. I’ve wondered how to do this a few times but always lost interest after looking at the man manual page and all the options therein. Thanks.
THANKS