the man application

[Sweet William]

HI folks,

I've been scrounging for information using man.
What a pathetic way to find information in the 21st century!

Isn't there a better way of accessing and searching man files interactively?

TIA
--

Sweet William

using VL-5.8-STD-GOLD

[bigpaws]

I never thought of searching man pages.

The best time for using a man page is to
find switches and such.

Something like apropos works better.

Google is also another great resource.

What type of information are you looking for?

HTH

Bigpaws

[Sweet William]

I never thought of searching man pages.

Really?

The best time for using a man page is to
find switches and such.

There is much more than that in them. At least some of the config files are documented as man pages.

Something like apropos works better.

Not half as well as the "/pattern" command.

Google is also another great resource.

I'd drop the "great"; it's so so. After about 4 sites describing complicated ways of using man I found ONE that described the interactive commands. You can't even find those with "man man".

What type of information are you looking for?

HTH

Bigpaws

Thanks anyway,
--

Sweet William

using VL-5.8-STD-GOLD

[kidd]

apropos or man -k does the job pretty well for me.

If you happen to use zsh, you can use alt-h or esc followed by h, to show the man page of the first word on the command line.

[exeterdad]

man -k is all I need when searching for keywords.  But normally I just use man to find command switches for whatever command I'm trying to tweak.  Konqueror is able to read and search man pages.  But I'd rather not have all the KDE stuff installed to do what I can do easy enough from cli.

[bigpaws]

I never thought of searching man pages.
Really?

No never came to mind that it was something to do. Of course
never did a man man.

The best time for using a man page is to
find switches and such.
There is much more than that in them. At least some of the config files are documented as man pages.

I have not found that to be the case for me. Which is of course limited.

Something like apropos works better.
Not half as well as the "/pattern" command.

Never tried that.

You have enlightened me to even try man man, that was a
wake up call to a point.

Google for me has been a primary source for me.
Granted that I have had to dig quit a bit for some
of the things I am looking for. There is talk about
a new search engine on the horizon that will compete with
Google.

Bigpaws

[tomh38]

thomas:$ man woman
No manual entry for woman

Dammit!

Sorry, old joke I know, but I just couldn't resist.  I'm weak like that.

[rbistolfi]

Just /<keyword> works for me. But I only use it when reviewing a man page, you have to read all of it at least once
Kidd, that zsh feature is a good one.

[caitlyn]

If you're working in X then xman does have a search function that works well.  Otherwise, for me, it is man -k or apropos as already suggested.

I've never figured out why VL doesn't include a .desktop file for xman.  It's come in handy for migrants from Windows who are more comfortable in the GUI than at the command line.

[Sivatheja]

Whow! lot of interesting things here!
Xman, xkill nice.

[tomh38]

xman

Wait ... what?

Sorry guys ...

[exeterdad]

xman

Wait ... what?

Sorry guys ...

tomh38, here's your....
You've worked so hard to earn it

[tomh38]

*sob*