Hi CB, And now this is clear as well. Thanks a bundle. So what groff does is take man's output, in whatever format man outputs it, and then reformats that into postscript, whatever that is. I'll be reading. Paul. On Feb 9, 2012, at 4:00 PM, Chris Blouch wrote:
> Didn't see an answer yet so let me try. > > 1. man -t routes the output of the man page through groff which defaults to > making it into Postscript and then Jonathan piped that postscript into the > OSX Preview app. Gives you a nice formatted output in a more Mac friendly > viewer. > > 2. I think most of your question will be answered if you do a "man open". The > open command opens some file just as though you had done an Command-O in the > finder on it. The -a modifier specifies which application to use to open the > file and the -f option tells it to read input from standard in rather than a > file, which would be needed to accept input from the pipe's output. > > CB > > On 2/9/12 6:11 AM, Paul Erkens wrote: >> Hi Johnathan, >> >>> Looking at the command you gave: >>> man -t bash | open -a preview -f >> I have 2 questions. >> >> 1. man bash or man -t bash. What is groff? From man, I don't become any >> wiser. It seems that man -t bash, will have man pass its output to groff, >> rather than to stout, while groff in turn, does pass it to stdout with a lot >> of modifications. What is it that I see, when I enter man -t? Groff is a >> front end for something else that I completely don't understand. Question >> here is: what are you doing, using man -t? >> >> 2. The output from man, traveling through gruff by means of the man -t >> option, is then piped into the preview command. So far so good. But what is >> the -f preview option for? I googled a lot but where do you find the preview >> mac command line options? Question here is: what is -f doing in preview? >> >> I understand the -a switch for open. If this were not in place, then the >> open command, a mac specific one I know now, would never know where to look. >> -a Specifies to look inside the applications folder, wherever that resides. >> Can you please answer my 2 questions above? It looks like each new answer >> poses new questions, but that will settle down over time I hope. >> >> Paul. >> On Feb 9, 2012, at 4:10 AM, Jonathan C. Cohn wrote: >> >>> The prompt string is defined in the variable PS1 for the bourne shell. I >>> believe that bash (bourne again shell ) also uses this variable. Note: >>> you only need to set it, no need to export it to the environment. >>> >>> First check to verify the shell you are running >>> echo$shell >>> >>> then run a man page on the shell (if you want to get fancy , then code like >>> the below should bring up the man page in preview... >>> >>> man -t bash | open -a preview -f >>> >>> But then again, google can find man pages, and there is actually a option >>> in Google settings to indicate that you want a UNIX man page when you enter >>> "man XXX" in the google search bar. >>> >>> Best wishes, >>> >>> >>> >>> Jonathan C. Cohn >>> [email protected] >>> >>> >>> >>> On Feb 8, 2012, at 8:54 AM, Paul Erkens wrote: >>> >>>> Dear list, >>>> >>>> I am learning to change the terminal prompt. It now includes my machine >>>> name and my user name, which is what I want to get rid of. I think that >>>> the prompt is contained in an environment variable. I found that I can >>>> look at them by using env without parameters, and that works. However, >>>> prompt is not in here. Where do I need to look, to find the placeholders >>>> string that gives me my prompt? >>>> >>>> Paul. >>>> >>>> -- >>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>>> "MacVisionaries" group. >>>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >>>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>>> [email protected]. >>>> For more options, visit this group at >>>> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >>>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>> "MacVisionaries" group. >>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>> [email protected]. >>> For more options, visit this group at >>> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >>> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
