Create text file from man page

**pdavis68** · 07-04-2005

How can I create a text file from a man page?

I tried: man -P cat appname > appname.txt

This was pretty close, but it still had a lot of formatting codes and duplicate letters (for the bold).

Is there a simple way to simply dump the text with minimal formatting? I assume so because there are many web pages that display the man page for apps.

Thanks.

Pete

**jlgreer1** · 07-04-2005

Why don't you just copy and paste the text you want?

I would open the man page, highlight the desired text, select copy from the edit menu, and then paste it into an open text editor of your choice.

May not be the most elegant solution but it would work.

Jeff

**nalg0rath** · 07-04-2005

Try this:

Code:

man &#91;manual&#93; | col -b > file.txt

**pdavis68** · 07-04-2005

Thanks, that was just what I needed.

As for the Copy/Paste suggestion, that's a real headache when you're working from a terminal and the man page is really long.

Pete

**drakebasher** · 07-05-2005

I asked a similar question a while back and got a slightly different response: http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/pos...61.html#168961
That gives a postscript output that can be piped to a printer for a nice result.

**Dolda2000** · 07-05-2005

Alternatively, you can pipe it to a PS viewer program for online viewing. That's also quite a nice alternative over a terminal pager for viewing a man page, since it's neatly formatted and all.

For example, to use Gnome's PS viewer, ggv:

Code:

man -t ls | ggv -

**pdavis68** · 07-05-2005

Interesting. Actually, I just wanted plain text so that I could load it into a web browser on my Windoze box, so I could have easy searching and scrolling while being able to use the information in my terminal windows.

My Linux box is my file server/router, and a few other things, but not a desktop box. It's located in a closet in another room, so I only access it from telnet.

My main issue was editing scripts while being able to easily maneuver long a couple very long man pages for a couple apps that I use quite a bit.

Pete

**Dolda2000** · 07-05-2005

In that case, you may be more interested in man2html. Unfortunately, man2html doesn't search for man pages itself, but it can be automated with this shell command:

Code:

man -W thecommandyouwant | grep -v cache | head -n1 | xargs zcat | man2html >/path/to/outputfile.html

**valan** · 07-05-2005

You can use groff to add html formatting to the man page.

bzcat /usr/share/man/man1/nano.1.bz2 | groff -T html -man > nano.1.html

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