Saving man pages

[neesthan]

Hello. I try to save some man pages on my Snow Leopard. I do it the following way:

man cp > man_cp.txt

Then when I try to open it in Terminal like this

less man_cp.txt

it looks fine. But when I try to open it in TextEdit, for instance, the text looks very strange - some characters are doubled like this:

CP(1) BSD General Commands Manual CP(1)

NNAAMMEE
ccpp -- copy files

SSYYNNOOPPSSIISS
ccpp [--RR [--HH | --LL | --PP]] [--ffii | --nn] [--aappvvXX] _s_o_u_r_c_e___f_i_l_e _t_a_r_g_e_t___f_i_l_e
ccpp [--RR [--HH | --LL | --PP]] [--ffii | --nn] [--aappvvXX] _s_o_u_r_c_e___f_i_l_e _._._.
_t_a_r_g_e_t___d_i_r_e_c_t_o_r_y

DDEESSCCRRIIPPTTIIOONN
In the first synopsis form, the ccpp utility copies the contents of the
_s_o_u_r_c_e___f_i_l_e to the _t_a_r_g_e_t___f_i_l_e. In the second synopsis form, the con-
tents of each named _s_o_u_r_c_e___f_i_l_e is copied to the destination
_t_a_r_g_e_t___d_i_r_e_c_t_o_r_y. The names of the files themselves are not changed. If
ccpp detects an attempt to copy a file to itself, the copy will fail.

If I try to print it out on a printer it also looks wrong.
What's the reason?

 

[chown33]

The default output from man is formatted for a simple terminal or printer using backspaces and overstrikes. You can't see backspaces and overstrikes in TextEdit.app.

Everywhere you see a doubled character, there's a backspace between them. This represents bold. Where you see _ followed by a letter, that's underlined, and there's a backspace between them, too.

If your goal is to print man pages on a printer, I suggest getting Bwana, opening the man page in your web browser, and printing it from there.

If your goal is something else, please explain exactly what it is.

 

[neesthan]

Thanks, chown33, for your exhaustive explanation why the text looks that way.
My goal was just to print it out on paper for reference. I have just got a suggestion from another forum - using -t option:

man -t cp > man_cp

It will save man_cp as a PostScript file which then can be viewed and printed through Preview.app, for instance.

 

[waynep]

I found them online here:

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/darwin/reference/manpages/

 

[neesthan]

I found them online here:

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/darwin/reference/manpages/

Thanks. I just took the cp command as an example. Actually I needed man pages to exiv2 (metadata manipulation for jpeg and other formats) which was installed through MacPorts. This is not a standart program and I am not sure it will be on the site you've mentioned.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Thanks. I just took the cp command as an example. Actually I needed man pages to exiv2 (metadata manipulation for jpeg and other formats) which was installed through MacPorts. This is not a standart program and I am not sure it will be on the site you've mentioned.

man exiv2 | col -b | open -f

... will do what you want.
Replace "exiv2" with the name of the program in question. That will open the manual in TextEdit, formatted neatly.

Tip from here: http://www.tuaw.com/2007/04/19/terminal-tip-output-man-pages-as-plain-text-with-col/

 

[neesthan]

Well, I think this way is even better because you don't need to save the file. The only thing: if one wants to open a manual in a specific application, for instance, TextWrangler, one need to add -a and the path to that application:

man exiv2 | col -b | open -f -a /Applications/TextWrangler.app

Thanks to everybody!