Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

greenjeans · 2026-07-01 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 (2026-07-02 20:56:03)

Andre4freedom · 2026-07-02 05:50:25

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

swanson · 2026-07-02 09:54:26

You're the man!

greenjeans · 2026-07-02 16:10:14

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

fanderal · 2026-07-02 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 · 2026-07-02 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 · 2026-07-02 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 · 2026-07-02 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.

ralph.ronnquist · 2026-07-02 22:24:59

Eh? no man page?

greenjeans · 2026-07-02 23:39:56

Eh? no man page?

Aarrrgh! I can't win, I just can't....yes, the irony, I see it. I really thought you might be happy that I paid homage to the man pages and made them more accessible to normies.

Last edited by greenjeans (2026-07-02 23:40:30)

ralph.ronnquist · Today 10:42:37

Yes, it's a good thing, and by the looks of it more end-user focussed/supportive than some others like qman and gtkman. I just wanted to read how to use it

greenjeans · Today 13:07:13

Well it's pretty simple and doesn't do a whole lot, but I did make a usage section on the gitea readme... perhaps a simple man page that included that info, then basically the first couple of paragraphs from the man page for man itself describing what it does and the general categories, then a short description of apropos, with a "See Also" bit at the end with names of related pages?

I don't know squat about writing man pages though, the raw format is weird. Seems like they could have just used .txt files.

rbit · Today 15:22:55

Very nice.
I know it's simple and maybe you want to keep it that way.
One feature request would be, after searching, to double-click an item in the list would either (1) view that page, or (2) put it in the "view page" text box.
Another feature request would be for the new window it opens to remember its last size and position - or at least make it as wide as the text that it's displaying, to prevent the word-wrap.

greenjeans · Today 16:27:07

Thanks rbit! Yeah double-clicks are a pet peeve, I did make it where you can just hit the enter key after highlighting a search result to open the page if that helps, i'm old and my fine motor skills are declining and sometimes I mean to single-click something and my hand spazzes and I wind up and double-click something I didn't mean to.

Only way to not have word wrap ever is to maximize on open, some fit nicely in an even smaller window, some are just wide, I tried to split the difference as best I could. The function to format the raw man-page into readable format is within yad itself so it would be too much work to re-build yad to auto-detect and size accordingly, and really beyond the goal and scope of this tiny utility to pre-process the format before handing it off to yad. What made this all do-able so quick and with so little code was the ability to pipe a page into yad and let it do the work, that and apropos do all the work, I just made a window for 'em is all.

Okay I got a simple man page made, decided to just go with basic usage info with links to man, mandb, and apropos pages at the bottom, will get it up on gitea here shortly and put it in the next re-package.

greenjeans · Today 17:30:47

vuuman.1.gz here : https://sourceforge.net/projects/vuu-do … ps/VuuMan/

Raw code on gitea : https://git.devuan.org/greenjeans/vuuma … n/vuuman.1

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#1 2026-07-01 22:47:50

Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

#2 2026-07-02 05:50:25

Re: Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

#3 2026-07-02 09:54:26

Re: Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

#4 2026-07-02 16:10:14

Re: Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

#5 2026-07-02 17:27:27

Re: Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

#6 2026-07-02 18:20:07

Re: Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

#7 2026-07-02 19:12:35

Re: Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

#8 2026-07-02 20:05:21

Re: Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

#9 2026-07-02 22:24:59

Re: Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

#10 2026-07-02 23:39:56

Re: Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

#11 Today 10:42:37

Re: Basic GUI man-page browser/viewer

#12 Today 13:07:13

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#13 Today 15:22:55

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#14 Today 16:27:07

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#15 Today 17:30:47

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