Xmanview - 1.0

A simple man page viewer for OS X. Xmanview uses rman to convert man pages into HTML with hyperlinking. Apropos style output can be generated by prepending the man page request with '-k'. Actually, anything you type into the request field will be passed to the underlying man command as arguments.

Application use:
Simply type the name of the man page you want to view into the field and press enter/return. The application will generate and display the man page via the 'man' program and rman (or a perl filter for apropos output).

Once output has been displayed, click on any of the blue hyperlinks to go to traverse between the table of contents and sections in the man page. In apropos output, click any of the links to view the man page. See also references are also hyperlinks and will take you to the appropriate man page.

The combo box at the top of the window also provides a history of the last 15 requests. Pull down and select any request to go to that page.

As man page generation is relatively quick, no attempt is made to cache results. This has the added advantage of ensuring that displayed man pages are always up to date with whatever is installed on the system.

Any additional flags to man can simply be typed into the field. I.e. to generate an apropos listing for "open", simply type...

-k open

.... into the field. Likewise, you can generate output containing all of the different open man pages by....

-a open

Command Line Access

Included with the application is a command line utility called xmv. xmv is used exactly like man. As such, requesting the man page for 'ls' is as simple as typing...

xmv ls

.... and grabbing the apropos output for directory can be done via...

xmv -k directory

It is recommended that you install in /usr/local/bin/. Alternatively, create a bin directory in your home directory and stick xmv in that directory. (If you do this from a shell, use the 'rehash' command to cause the shell to update its table of the commands available and their location).