Solution for my manpage crysis

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82issa
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Solution for my manpage crysis

Post#1 by 82issa » 16 Apr 2011, 20:48

man oh man

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man man
Under the Name it says
man - format and display the on-line manual pages
I might be blind or dumb. But I have not been able to figure out how to get the on-line manual pages. I have plugged away for a while and have come to a couple conclusions.

The first is a really small shell script. named "oman" get it o-man no no I think you are not getting it. It is short for online manual.

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#! /bin/bash
lynx http://man.cx/$1
I know, I know. Your not using the actual man pages. Its just sweet and simple. I just move it to my bin directory.

So I (brain stormed) a little more. And realized how much time to people spend actually needing to craw through hundreds of man pages. Almost none.
What if there was a NFS mounted to whatever and we just add that to the $MANPATH It only needs to be read-only. And could be easily added to live distro. With access to many many more man pages than your system might hold.
Sorry guys... I got to go. My girlfriend just casted "get your dirty ass into the shower" on me.
Oh and here is some naked grandpa pictures too.

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fanthom
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Re: Solution for my manpage crysis

Post#2 by fanthom » 17 Apr 2011, 21:54

nice idea but i see one problem:
it wont work without internet access.

i'm voting on man pages included in distro :)
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82issa
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Re: Solution for my manpage crysis

Post#3 by 82issa » 18 Apr 2011, 12:44

Well I think it would still work. Seamlessly without to many people noticing. If we did a NFS repo with all those manpages.
Sorry guys... I got to go. My girlfriend just casted "get your dirty ass into the shower" on me.
Oh and here is some naked grandpa pictures too.

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Re: Solution for my manpage crysis

Post#4 by lo-n-behold » 19 Apr 2011, 11:32

why not ship a minimal amount of man-pages
and add a separate module "manpages" for offline users
and add your "oman" script too

cat /usr/local/bin/man

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#!/usr/bin/bash
/usr/bin/man $*
if [ $? ]; then lynx http://man.cx/$1; fi

btw, the expression "online manpages" dates from before the internet,
it means that they are on your computer (i.e. on-line), instead of on paper in the cupboard (i.e. off-line)

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82issa
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Re: Solution for my manpage crysis

Post#5 by 82issa » 19 Apr 2011, 13:12

I just cant believe that they would not update their man manpage. Very sexy code tho.
I will be changing my oman code during lunch break.
Sorry guys... I got to go. My girlfriend just casted "get your dirty ass into the shower" on me.
Oh and here is some naked grandpa pictures too.

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fanthom
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Re: Solution for my manpage crysis

Post#6 by fanthom » 19 Apr 2011, 15:39

@lo-n-behold and 82issa
man pages are well compressed by 'xz' (and lzma too) - they really takes only minimal space in the ISO. i would leave them in place.
anyway, i like the idea of using 'lynx' when man page is missing.
your script will be added to next Porteus release.

Thanks a lot guys :)

EDIT:\\
rewritten the code and improved a bit:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

if [ "$1" = "" ]; then echo "What manual page do you want?"; exit; fi
/usr/bin/man $* || for x in $*; do lynx http://man.cx/$x; done
otherwise man page for existing manuals would be opened twice (one from local and one from remote repository)

Cheers
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82issa
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Re: Solution for my manpage crysis

Post#7 by 82issa » 19 Apr 2011, 16:22

I like the revision of the code @ fanthom. Great work all around. I only see
one potential problems. I don't know how long http://man.cx will be arround
their page extension works perfectly for our scripts. Maybe in future we will
have something a little more solid. For now excellent solution. Thanks for both
of your efforts and input @lo-n-behold and fanthom.

Edit:
And one more thing. Do you guys think /usr/local/bin/man the best path for this?
Sorry guys... I got to go. My girlfriend just casted "get your dirty ass into the shower" on me.
Oh and here is some naked grandpa pictures too.

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fanthom
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Re: Solution for my manpage crysis

Post#8 by fanthom » 19 Apr 2011, 16:43

@82issa
yes - /usr/local/bin is before /usr/bin
check "echo $PATH"

(scripts and binaries added by user are prioritized)
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82issa
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Re: Solution for my manpage crysis

Post#9 by 82issa » 19 Apr 2011, 16:49

Good stuff I was not aware of that.
Sorry guys... I got to go. My girlfriend just casted "get your dirty ass into the shower" on me.
Oh and here is some naked grandpa pictures too.

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