Tip #167: Using vim as a man-page viewer under Unix

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Rating 51/20, Viewed by 2277

created:		November 21, 2001 7:29		complexity:		intermediate
author:		Charles E. Campbell, Jr.		as of Vim:		6.0

To use vim as a man-page viewer involves setting an environment variable: sh, ksh: export MANPAGER="col -b | view -c 'set ft=man nomod nolist' -" csh : setenv MANPAGER "col -b | view -c 'set ft=man nomod nolist' -" Put one of the above two lines into your <.profile> or <.login> file as appropriate for your shell. The man pages will then be displayed with vim called as "view" and will use the <man.vim> syntax highlighting. I myself use some additional highlighting which is enabled by putting the following file into <.vim/after/syntax/man.vim>. I usually use the <astronaut> colorscheme (also available from this archive); those who use bright backgrounds may find the colors selected for manSubSectionStart and manSubSection something they'll want to change: --------------------------------------------------------------------- " DrChip's additional <man.vim> stuff syn match manSectionHeading "^\s\+[0-9]\+\.[0-9.]*\s\+[A-Z].*$" contains=manSectionNumber syn match manSectionNumber "^\s\+[0-9]\+\.[0-9]*" contained syn region manDQString start='[^a-zA-Z"]"[^", )]'lc=1 end='"' contains=manSQString syn region manSQString start="[ \t]'[^', )]"lc=1 end="'" syn region manSQString start="^'[^', )]"lc=1 end="'" syn region manBQString start="[^a-zA-Z`]`[^`, )]"lc=1 end="[`']" syn region manBQSQString start="``[^),']" end="''" syn match manBulletZone transparent "^\s\+o\s" contains=manBullet syn case match syn keyword manBullet contained o syn match manBullet contained "\[+*]" syn match manSubSectionStart "^\*" skipwhite nextgroup=manSubSection syn match manSubSection ".*$" contained hi link manSectionNumber Number hi link manDQString String hi link manSQString String hi link manBQString String hi link manBQSQString String hi link manBullet Special hi manSubSectionStart term=NONE cterm=NONE gui=NONE ctermfg=black ctermbg=black guifg=navyblue guibg=navyblue hi manSubSection term=underline cterm=underline gui=underline ctermfg=green guifg=green set ts=8 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Additional Notes

Douglas Potts <[email protected]>, November 26, 2001 6:10

As part of the man filetype plugin delivered in Vim 6.0, the user command :Man is setup to view man pages in a similar fashion. (On Unix) I've sym-linked the man.vim filetype plugin from the distribution into the plugin directory. That was the :Man command is available whenever you need it. Hope that was useful.

Alper Ersoy <[email protected]>, December 1, 2001 0:38

I had to use PAGER variable instead of MANPAGER. Version of the man tool I use is 2.3.10. People who would like to try this may like to check tip #121 too.

[email protected], January 30, 2002 11:24

Two things: 1. Some versions of sh don't support setting environment variables and exporting on the same line. In that case, you'd have to do: > MANPAGER="col -b | view -c 'set ft=man nomod nolist' -" > export MANPAGER 2. Another comment mentioned that their man doesn't support the MANPAGER env var, so they had to use PAGER. You probably don't want to do that on a permanent basis, since PAGER is used for many other things besides man. Instead, you might create a small script in your $HOME/bin that sets it in a subshell, for example (vman.sh): #!/bin/sh PAGER="col -b | view -c 'set ft=man nomod nolist' - " export PAGER man $* and then do 'vman ls' or whatever. Replace PAGER with MANPAGER if your man supports it and you want to use the script. 3. You might want to add ignorecase to the list of settings passed to vim (view) to more closely match the searching of most man pagers (less and more). Ok, I lied - 3 things.

supergrass@gmx.net, February 9, 2002 3:36

even simpler way what I did was: 1) renamed my less to less.orig 2) edited the less.sh script : if test $# = 0; then vim -c 'so $VIMRUNTIME/macros/less.vim' - elif test $* = "-is"; then less.orig $* else vim -c 'so $VIMRUNTIME/macros/less.vim' $* fi 3) symlinked $VIMRUNTIME/macros/less.sh to /usb/bin/less so as you can see when the man is called it just passes the parameters to less.orig simple, fast works have phun :)

[email protected], May 16, 2002 20:00

On my Red Hat 7.2 system, view invokes vi (vim in vi compatibility mode), so extra vim features such as syntax highlighting are not available. To use vim instead of vi for the pager, either manipulate the /bin/view link, or set substitute "vim -R" for "view".

[email protected], August 14, 2002 9:00

Replace view with less.sh of vim will maintain the same keystrokes as less. The following set the MANPAGER for sh, ksh and bash: export MANPAGER="col -b | /usr/share/vim/vim61/macros/less.sh -c 'set ft=man nomod nolist' -"

[email protected], October 3, 2002 19:19

The original tip works great for me (export MANPAGER="col -b | view -c 'set ft=man nomod nolist' -"), however, if I then try ':Man some-man-page' inside vim after executing man from the shell, I get the following in the window: Vim: Warning: Input is not from a terminal ^M Error executing formatting or display command. System command (cd /usr/man && (echo ".pl 11i"; /bin/gunzip -c '/usr/man/man3/puts.3.gz') | /usr/bin/gtbl | /usr/bin/nroff -S -mandoc | col -b | view -c 'set ft=man nomod nolist' -) exited with status 256. No manual entry for fputc ?47h?1hmH2J24;1H"-stdin-" [RO] 64L, 1791C1;24rmH2J24;1H?1l2J?47lVim: Error reading input, exiting... Vim: Finished. 24;1HVim: Reading from stdin... [Somewhat paradoxically, this occurs only if the man page *does* exist, teehee; if it doesn't, I just get a line telling me 'Cannot find a 'foo'.' in the command-line area.] I assume it's because :Man doesn't like vim/view being in the MANPAGER, so my current messy workaround is 'let $MANPAGER="/usr/bin/less"' in ~/.vimrc; does anyone have a better solution? Being able to use K to jump around the manpages is the major reason why I want to use vim as the manpager ;)

Anonymous, November 7, 2002 22:41

I'm having the same problem as ajw. Seems that it's either ":Man", or vim as pager for man from the command line. Making sure that MANPAGER is only set for interactive shells, and then doing "let $MANPAGER='/usr/bin/less'" in .vimrc does help some, as ajw suggests, but it means that you're stuck with less once you've jumped out of the first man page via K. Anybody know how to make vim as MANPAGER and ":Man" from man.vim play nice together?

[email protected], November 27, 2002 6:56

There's now a while-you're-in-vim solution -- check out vimscript#489 for <Manpageview.vim> for a new :Man command and support for the K normal-mode command.

Anonymous, December 18, 2002 3:04

Great!

[email protected], December 27, 2002 7:25

Using MANPAGER doesn't work so well with vimscript#489; instead, I now use a Korn shell function. Similar functions could be developed for other shells (bash, zsh), I'm sure: # man: function man { /usr/bin/man $* | col -b | /usr/local/bin/view -c 'set ft=man nomod nolist' - }

jhf.remmelzwaal at europe.com, January 2, 2003 3:06

Reading man pages on NT, Win2000 etc. Windows NT, etc has remote shell client support. This can be used to read the man pages on a unix system. I changed script vimscript#489 in the following way: ----------------------------------------------- *** manpageview.vim~ Thu Jan 2 11:42:14 2003 --- manpageview.vim Thu Jan 2 11:44:48 2003 *************** *** 87,94 **** enew! set mod " call Decho("manpagebook<".manpagebook."> topic<".manpagetopic.">") ! exe "r!man ".manpagebook." ".manpagetopic ! %!col -b setlocal ft=man nomod nolist set nolz endfunction --- 87,98 ---- enew! set mod " call Decho("manpagebook<".manpagebook."> topic<".manpagetopic.">") ! if has('win32') ! exe "r!rsh g:manpageview_server -l g:manpageview_user man ".manpagebook." ".manpagetopic." | col -b" ! 1 ! else ! exe "r!man ".manpagebook." ".manpagetopic ! %!col -b ! endif setlocal ft=man nomod nolist set nolz endfunction ----------------------------------------------- Set your unix system (g:manpageview_server) and user account (g:manpageview_user) in your _vimrc. Set your NT system name and user account in your ~/.rhosts on your unix system.




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