MAN READER

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
OPTIONS
NOTES
SAND-BOXING
HISTORY
SEE ALSO
BUG REPORTS
AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT

NAME

Man Reader − utility for reading OS X man pages

SYNOPSIS

The first time Man Reader starts up, it assembles a list of the man page files on your Mac. These are listed on the left. Clicking on any entry will load the man page for that command. The left and right arrows above the man page area are history buttons allowing you to step back & forward over recently viewed man pages. Hold down the mouse on either of these buttons for a menu. Application buttons in the toolbar give quick & easy access to utilities and development tools.

DESCRIPTION

You can search for entries in the following ways:

By Section:

All man pages are allocated to a section. The main sections are identified by a single digit or letter e.g. Section 1 - General User Commands.

Sub-sections are labelled with a digit followed by some letters. e.g. Section 1ssl is a sub-section of Section 1 dealing with SSL.

Select any section from the popup at the top right of the window, to restrict the list to entries in that section only.

By Text:

Start typing into the 'Search for...' search field and the list will become restricted to entries containing the text you have entered.

This search is case-insensitive. Use the menu in the search field to specify "Starts with" or "Contains" to adjust your search.

To do a 'NOT' search, start by typing !
e.g. '!ca' will find any entries whose name does not include (or start with) 'ca'.

If an entry is not found, press Return and the app will look for a matching man page, even if it is not in the list.

These 2 search methods work together so you can search for a particular string, inside a specified section.

Once a page has been displayed, you can search within the text of the page using the search field above the text. The standard search menu items are shortcuts are available for this.

Pages that you read frequently can be bookmarked. Click the bookmark icon at the top of the page or use the menu item to toggle. Once bookmarked, these pages can be selected from the Bookmarks menu, or the Sections popup can be used to show all bookmarked pages.

OPTIONS

Using Preferences, in the Font tab you can select the font and font size for the man page display. You can also set the size of the entries in the list on the left and whether they show more detail as a tooltip when the mouse pointer hovers over an entry.

Colors lets you design your own scheme for the display.

Markers allows you to customize the colors in the marker tabs beside each page. I had used fluoro colors to simulate sticky notes, but not everyone liked my skeuomorphic choice, so now there are several sets to choose from. You can also construct your own set.

Utilities is a new tab that allows you to select the apps that show in the main window's toolbar. Select apps by drag & drop or using the + & - buttons.

To change the font size of the man page display temporarily, use the 'Size' menu items in the View menu.

At the top left of the man page area is a checkbox labelled 'HTML'. Some man pages look best in HTML while others format more readably in plain text. This usually depends on the age of the man page. Toggle this checkbox to get the best display for each specific entry. Displaying as HTML is generally slower.

NOTES

Sometimes, Man Reader will be unable to find a man page for your selected entry. The list of available man pages is taken from the system and updated regularly, but it contains a number of invalid entries.

Many of these have been filtered out of the list automatically, but it would be take too long to perform a complete check.

Although the list of pages is automatically refreshed, if you have installed any new tools with man pages, you may want to force a refresh. Use 'Refresh man page list' in the File menu to do this. The list of man pages is taken from the whatis database which is refreshed weekly as part of the standard system maintenance. If you wish to refresh this database manually, use the following command in Terminal:

sudo /etc/periodic/weekly/320.whatis

Man Reader is restricted by Apple's sand-boxing and can only search defined paths on your system drive e.g. /usr/, /opt/ If you have man pages that are not being shown because they are in folders that Man Reader has no permission to access, then you can create a symbolic link using Terminal. e.g.

sudo ln -s /your/man/folder/ /usr/share

SAND-BOXING

As with all apps in the App Store, Man Reader is restricted by Apple's sand-boxing policy. This means it can only search defined paths on your system drive e.g. /usr/, /opt/

This may not be a problem depending on the software on your Mac. To tell if Man Reader is missing man pages, copy & paste the following command into Terminal:

whatis . >> ~/Desktop/whatis.txt

This will create a text file on your desktop with a list of all available man pages on your system. Open it in a text editor.

To check what man pages ManReader can read, go to Finder and select 'Go to Folder..." from the Go menu. Paste in the following path: ~/Library/Containers/net.troz.Man-Reader/Data/Library/Application Support/Man Reader/

You will see two files: open the one called 'ManReader.raw' in a text editor. Compare the number of lines in the two files.

If they are nearly the same, then you do not need to worry. If they are very different, then go to http://troz.net/manreader-sandbox/ for more information.

HISTORY

Please rate or review Man Reader at the App Store using the link in the Help menu.

SEE ALSO

BUG REPORTS

Check the Man Reader support page at http://troz.net/manreader/. If your question is not answered there, use the link below to email the author directly.

AUTHOR

Sarah Reichelt <sarah@troz.net>
Version 1.2 was greatly helped by ideas and testing from Robert J. Gebis.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2014 Sarah Reichelt, TrozWare.