Man page oddity

[Anne Wilson]

On Wednesday 29 March 2006 18:34, CodeHeads wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 18:11:06 +0100
>
> Anne Wilson <cannewilson at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
> > Something I've never seen before -
> >
> > If a man page is long and I need to study it, I print it out from
> > Konqueror (kio slave) which gives a nicely formatted, easy-to-read
> > output.  Today I tried to print out two man pages.  One, amanda.conf,
> > prints perfectly, but the other one, amanda, prints nothing other than
> > the header line.  Nothing seems to make any difference to it.
> >
> > I've got by using copy/past and printed out, so it's not a
> > show-stopper.  I just wondered if anyone has seen this sort of thing
> > before?
> >
> > Anne
>
> Hi Anne,
>
> This is what I use to print and look at man pages. It is a bit easier.
>
> #!/bin/bash
> ## INSTALLATION:
> ## MAKE A FILE mancon AND PLACE IT IN THE /USR/BIN DIRECTORY, YOU MUST
> BE ROOT TO DO THIS ## CHMOD IT TO 700 - * CHOWN TO YOUR USERNAME - *
> (chown user:user /usr/bin/mancon) ## TYPE IN mancon AT THE TERMINAL AND
> YOU SHOULD SEE "What is the man page?" ## ANY QUESTIONS VISIT
> HTTP://CODE-HEADS.COM
>
> echo "CodeHeads Man Page Conversion"
> read -p "What is the man page?? " M
> if [[ $M == "" ]]
> then
> echo "Sorry need a MAN page to convert"
> else
> man $M | col -b > ~/$M.txt
> echo; echo "Your file has been saved as $M.txt in your home directory"
> fi
>
> A text file always seems easier to print. :)  Hope this helps.
>
Hi, Will.  As you know, copy and paste from a terminal output of a man page 
takes a heck of a lot of cleaning up - which I presume is the point of your 
script.  Copy and paste from the kioslave output saves all that and can be 
printed from any text editor.

I was just curious as to why one man page would display correctly yet refuse 
to format for printing.  I've done it through the kioslave for many man pages 
without a problem.

If you've never tried it, in Konqueror's address bar, just enter man:whatever.

Anne
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