Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

greenjeans · Yesterday 22:47:50

Absolutely caveman simple GUI tool to search and view man pages. The top bar is for search and results appear in the main pane for choosing and opening, the bottom bar is for if you already know the name of the page and just want to open it. You can have multiple pages open, they are spawned by the main C+GTK window as separate instances of a yad text-info dialog, nice and readable. It uses apropos to search and only requires yad, man-db, and gtk. Finished up some more tweaks today, now just need to test for a few days before posting it up on git and making a package. Tiny binary of 28k, only about 250 lines of code so it's nice and fast, and apropos does a nice job of searching.

Pics have been re-sized to be smaller and load faster for forums, so you can't click through for a larger view

EDIT: Up on git now and .deb package on sourceforge:

https://git.devuan.org/greenjeans/vuuman

https://sourceforge.net/projects/vuu-do … ps/VuuMan/

Last edited by greenjeans (Today 20:56:03)

Andre4freedom · Today 05:50:25

Cool, bravo, that looks great!
Chapeau, Monsieur Greenjeans!

swanson · Today 09:54:26

You're the man!

greenjeans · Today 16:10:14

Thanks guys!!! I edited the original post with links to the git for source, and .deb package on Sourceforge.

fanderal · Today 17:27:27

Fine idea, greenjeans! Looks real good and will definitely check it out.

In the example of xz, the man page shows all 6 apps included in the xz-utils pkg. In the alsa-utils pkg, 20 apps are included but not all are shown on any alsa man page, and only 11 apps are listed in the alsa-utils repo page.

However, all the apps are shown in the /var/lib/dpkg/info/alsa-utils.list file. I've occasionally checked a 'pkg-name.list' file to see the actual cmd to start an app, and other apps in a pkg. Don't know how many use those info files, just wondering if they're worth a link.

greenjeans · Today 18:20:07

Thanks!
Going off what Fanderal posted I just did a search on "alsa" and got like 22 hits, looks like all of the man pages for the various things in alsa-utils and more. This is cool because most man pages have that "See Also" section with related man pages and for the most part i'm scoring all those in the results list, so it's just an extra click after that.

only 11 apps are listed in the alsa-utils repo page.

I'm counting 15? A few lines list 2-3 like:

- aplay, arecord: command line playback and recording
- aplaymidi, arecordmidi: command line MIDI playback and recording
- aconnect, aseqnet, aseqdump: command line MIDI sequencer control

Getting all those in my search and extras due to some extra packages I have onboard.

It's nothing special, just a frontend for man and apropos, but i'm having a lot of fun with it and I use the man pages constantly. For some reason my terminal which does have scrollbar functionality, does not allow the scrollbar to work if I pull up a man page, so I have to do a lot of spinning the mouse wheel to get where I want on a long page. That was the main reason I did this and it's going to speed up my workflow by quite a bit and reduce aggravation which is always good.

fanderal · Today 19:12:35

I'm counting 15? A few lines list 2-3

You're right. I counted lines and missed the additional apps.

my terminal ... does not allow the scrollbar to work if I pull up a man page

In the scrollbar, does click+hold the bar or clicking below/above the bar make it move? Up/Dn arrows and PgUp/PgDn keys work for me in man pages.

Installed, works great. Looks great too... from which file did your app pick up my settings for font size and color?

greenjeans · Today 20:05:21

In the scrollbar, does click+hold the bar or clicking below/above the bar make it move? Up/Dn arrows and PgUp/PgDn keys work for me in man pages.

No clicking and holding the bar doesn't work nor does clicking/holding the little arrows at the bottom/top. The arrow keys and page keys work, but in practice aren't any faster than the scrollwheel, PgUp/PgDown might be a hair faster.

from which file did your app pick up my settings for font size and color?

Oh no trick to that, as long as you don't add CSS to the GTK it defaults to using your system theme, colors, fonts etc. I don't like CSD so I try really hard not to use any CSS at all, so the app will look native with your chosen style whatever that may be.

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#1 Yesterday 22:47:50

Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

#2 Today 05:50:25

Re: Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

#3 Today 09:54:26

Re: Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

#4 Today 16:10:14

Re: Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

#5 Today 17:27:27

Re: Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

#6 Today 18:20:07

Re: Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

#7 Today 19:12:35

Re: Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

#8 Today 20:05:21

Re: Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

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