Generate man pages with TextExpander
A neat trick for generating man pages from the Terminal using TextExpander.
Sometimes you want to actually, properly read a man page in comfort rather than in the Terminal. For that, it’s not a bad idea to generate it in Preview but I often forget how to do this (usually some time lapses between instances).
So I came up with this neat little TextExpander snippet that allows you to do it:
- create a new plaintext snippet in TextExpander and call it “manprev” (or whatever works for you—I remember
man+ Preview) - the body of the snippet is this:
man -t %filltext:name=command% | open -f -a /Applications/Preview.app
- Go back to theTerminal and type
manprevon the Command Line - a dialogue box comes up like the one at the top of this entry:
- type in the command name that you are after and hit enter (to complete the snippet)
- hit enter again (to send the command in the Terminal) and,
- hey presto, Preview launches with the relevant
manpage, all elegant and readable, for you to peruse.
