On Wed, Dec 17, 2003 at 10:14:54PM +0100, Jan Minar wrote: > On Wed, Dec 17, 2003 at 01:07:35PM -0500, Lou Losee wrote: > > * Gruessle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-12-17 12:21]: > > > Is there a way I can open man files in a text editor. > > > I like to print one but have not configured my printer jet. > > > So I will email it to my other pc. > > > > Try man xxx | col -b > text-filename > > This actually should not work, you have to tell man(1) it should send the > formatted manpage to stdout, instead of messing with the pager.
This is incorrect; it is intended to work as Lou described, and it does work. man(1) checks whether its standard output is a terminal before starting a pager. If it isn't, which is the case when you do 'man ... | ...', it simply sends the formatted output to stdout. > Getting rid of the Latin-1 characters comes handy when mailing the > output, too. > > $ man --pager cat --ascii foo | col -b > text-filename --ascii is kind of a hack, and I'd like to get rid of it eventually or implement it in terms of other things. I tend to say 'LANG=C man -Tascii' for this. > Now we want the lines narrower than the default 80 characters (I guess > this won't work if man(1) is connected to the terminal, so the pipe is > vital here (that's why we use cat(1) as a pager--to force piping). > > $ env COLUMNS=70 man --pager cat --ascii foo | col -b > text-filename The '--pager cat' continues to be unnecessary here; $COLUMNS is still honoured. I prefer using the special-purpose $MANWIDTH for this, though. Narrowing the page does work even if man's output is a terminal. Cheers, -- Colin Watson (man-db maintainer) [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
