reading man files in Windows

  • Thread starter Thread starter VK
  • Start date Start date
V

VK

Hi,
whether there is something free in MS Windows, what could read unix man
files? I mean read taking into account formatting.
Regards, VK
 
VK said:
Hi,
whether there is something free in MS Windows, what could read unix man
files? I mean read taking into account formatting.
Regards, VK
Click to expand...
Insatll cygwin, www.cygwin.com, and you get the man command. Set up a
Samba share or PC-NFS mount to the appropriate place(s) on you *NIX box,
adjust your MANPATH, and away you go.

First few lines from cygwin "man man":
man(1)
man(1)

NAME
man - format and display the on-line manual pages
manpath - determine user's search path for man pages

SYNOPSIS
man [-acdfFhkKtwW] [--path] [-m system] [-p string] [-C
config_file]
[-M pathlist] [-P pager] [-S section_list] [section] name ...

DESCRIPTION
man formats and displays the on-line manual pages. If you
specify sec-
tion, man only looks in that section of the manual. name is
normally


Cheers,
Gary B-)
 
Gary R. Schmidt said:
Insatll cygwin, www.cygwin.com, and you get the man command. Set up a
Samba share or PC-NFS mount to the appropriate place(s) on you *NIX box,
adjust your MANPATH, and away you go.
Click to expand...
Many thanks for the suggestion.
With best regards, VK
 
I use less from http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less
Click to expand...

Must work radically different in Win than in *nix, unless you didn't
notice OP's stipulation "taking into account formatting".

less /usr/man/man1/slrnface.1

yields:


ESC[1mNAMEESC[0m
slrnface - show ESC[4mX-FacesESC[24m in X11 terminal emulator
ESC[1mSYNOPSISESC[0m
ESC[1mslrnface ESC[22m[ ESC[1m-xOffsetChar ESC[4mESC[22mx_char_offsetESC[24m ] [ ESC[1m
-yOffsetChar ESC[4mESC[22my_char_offsetESC[24m ]
[ ESC[1m-xOffsetPix ESC[4mESC[22mx_pixel_offsetESC[24m ] [ ESC[1m-yOffsetPix ESC[4
mESC[22my_pixel_offsetESC[24m ] [
ESC[1m-XFacePad ESC[4mESC[22mleft_paddingESC[24m ] [ ESC[1m-ink ESC[4mESC[22mfg_color
ESC[24m ] [ ESC[1m-paper ESC[4mESC[22mbg_colorESC[24m ] [ ESC[1m-pad-ESC[0m
ESC[1mColor ESC[4mESC[22mpad_colorESC[24m ]...
 
Blinky said:
charles wrote:

I use less from http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less
Click to expand...


Must work radically different in Win than in *nix, unless you didn't
notice OP's stipulation "taking into account formatting".

less /usr/man/man1/slrnface.1

yields:


ESC[1mNAMEESC[0m
slrnface - show ESC[4mX-FacesESC[24m in X11 terminal emulator
ESC[1mSYNOPSISESC[0m
ESC[1mslrnface ESC[22m[ ESC[1m-xOffsetChar ESC[4mESC[22mx_char_offsetESC[24m ] [ ESC[1m
-yOffsetChar ESC[4mESC[22my_char_offsetESC[24m ]
[ ESC[1m-xOffsetPix ESC[4mESC[22mx_pixel_offsetESC[24m ] [ ESC[1m-yOffsetPix ESC[4
mESC[22my_pixel_offsetESC[24m ] [
ESC[1m-XFacePad ESC[4mESC[22mleft_paddingESC[24m ] [ ESC[1m-ink ESC[4mESC[22mfg_color
ESC[24m ] [ ESC[1m-paper ESC[4mESC[22mbg_colorESC[24m ] [ ESC[1m-pad-ESC[0m
ESC[1mColor ESC[4mESC[22mpad_colorESC[24m ]...
Click to expand...

No, it works the same on *NIX, if I do "less
/usr/share/man/man1/man.1.gz" I get a lot of crud, because it's gzip'ed,
if I do "gzcat /usr/share/man/man1/man.1.gz | less", I get that
beautiful troff input (and once upon a time I could type [nt]roff just
as fast as straight text):
....
..\"
..TH man 1 "September 2, 1995"
..LO 1
..SH NAME
man \- format and display the on-line manual pages
..br
manpath \- determine user's search path for man pages
..SH SYNOPSIS
..B man
..RB [ \-acdfFhkKtwW ]
..RB [ --path ]

Cheers,
Gary B-)
 
Must work radically different in Win than in *nix, unless you didn't
notice OP's stipulation "taking into account formatting".

less /usr/man/man1/slrnface.1
Click to expand...

I don't know the formatting used in that slrnface.1 file. I can see that that
one does not format correctly. Less has worked fine for me on all the .man files
I've come across, I think they're ntroff formatted. (application/x-troff-man)

What is the slrnface.1 format?
 
charles said:
I don't know the formatting used in that slrnface.1 file. I can see that that
one does not format correctly. Less has worked fine for me on all the .man files
I've come across, I think they're ntroff formatted. (application/x-troff-man)

What is the slrnface.1 format?
Click to expand...
They are ANSI (or VT100) escape sequences. That is, what nroff does
when you tell it to output to an ANSI (or VT100) terminal. (Assuming
that the input file has the appropriate nroff commands in it).

Cheers,
Gary B-)
 
They are ANSI (or VT100) escape sequences. That is, what nroff does
when you tell it to output to an ANSI (or VT100) terminal. (Assuming
that the input file has the appropriate nroff commands in it).

Cheers,
Gary B-)
Click to expand...

Looking at the slrn.1 page (debian) and some of the .man pages I have locally it
looks like the slrn page contains raw nroff/ntroff commands rather than the
actual control codes that are in the .man files. Example I'm looking at is the
GNU gawk.man page.

Maybe it is a Windows thing.
 
I don't know the formatting used in that slrnface.1 file. I can see that that
one does not format correctly. Less has worked fine for me on all the .man files
I've come across, I think they're ntroff formatted. (application/x-troff-man)
Click to expand...
What is the slrnface.1 format?
Click to expand...

Ella Fyno. Sure works fine with man, though. :)
 
Ella Fyno. Sure works fine with man, though. :)
Click to expand...

Try <ftp://ftp.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2apps/man13b.zip> . The
utility is part of the DJGPP system, and runs well, as a console
application, under all versions of windows. Do read the readme.txt file
that comes with it (e.g. man.exe requires less.exe). All DJGPP files are
free and are under GPL.

/luigi


--
Luigi M Bianchi
Science and Technology Studies
Room 2048 TEL Building
York University, 4700 Keele St, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J-1P3
phone: +1 (416) 736-2100 x-30104 fax: +1 (416) 736-5188
http://www.yorku.ca/sasit/sts/
 
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