Info vs. Man -- Konqueror to the Rescue!
Hi, I wanted to share with the list a "discovery" I made recently. As some may already know but I only just learned, the list of protocols / schemes (as in the label preceding the ':' in an address entered in the Konqueror location bar) is not only extensible, but quite extensive. In particular, there's a scheme for displaying "info" files. Those who routinely resort to the "man" command (often following the use of the "apropos" or "man -k" command) will often find themselves remanded to the info entry for complete documentation. Furthermore, those who, like me, dislike the "info" program as a viewer for info files may be pleased to know that Konqueror has a protocol specifically for presenting info files. It presents info files in a form far more accessible than the info command itself. You can think of it as being an HTML conversion of a command's info files. (At this point, I'll shamefacedly admit that until just today, when I decided to check out its info entry, I was laboring under the assumption, reinforced by the limited information included in its man page, that the Gnu "sed" command did not support extended regular expressions. Oh, how hard I've made my life by not looking into this much sooner!) To see the complete list of Konqueror protocols configured for your system, run "kinfocenter" and select the "protocols" category. Some of the protocols include a documentation string that explains their use. If there's a KDE Menu entry for this, I don't know what it is. If someone out there does, please enlighten me. Randall Schulz
The Tuesday 2005-02-15 at 17:11 -0800, Randall R Schulz wrote:
Furthermore, those who, like me, dislike the "info" program as a viewer for info files may be pleased to know that Konqueror has a protocol specifically for presenting info files. It presents info files in a form far more accessible than the info command itself. You can think of it as being an HTML conversion of a command's info files.
For the command line, we can use "pinfo" instead ;-) Also, time ago, susehelp came with such a tool that worked with any browser. We just went to http://localhost, and the sample page had a link for man and info pages.
To see the complete list of Konqueror protocols configured for your system, run "kinfocenter" and select the "protocols" category. Some of the protocols include a documentation string that explains their use. If there's a KDE Menu entry for this, I don't know what it is. If someone out there does, please enlighten me.
Interesting :-) -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson
On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 12:11 pm, Randall R Schulz wrote:
For, those who, like me, dislike the "info" program as a viewer for info files may be pleased to know that Konqueror has a protocol specifically for presenting info files. It presents info files in a form far more accessible than the info command itself. You can think of it as being an HTML conversion of a command's info files.
Yes, but TIMTOWTDI (There is more than one way to do it) The standard Susehelp system comes with a serverside info to HTML translator, making info files browseable. If you have your default suse apache setup just browse to: http://localhost/cgi-bin/info2html for a complete linked list of info pages. I have (and you may need): /etc/sysconfig/apache2:DOC_SERVER="yes" /etc/sysconfig/susehelp:DOC_HOST="localhost" /etc/sysconfig/susehelp:DOC_ALLOW="all" I love Linux, there's so much there, you just have to find it, michaelj PS: I found this out the long way round. Got reprimanded for being so last week as to use man, fought with info, realized that all that emacs horror was trying to implement hyperlinking. Worked out that it would be better done in HTML wondered how to write some translator posted on the local Linux group asking if such a thing existed, got back a mention of info2html, did a locate on it and found it was there all along. I was shouting, "WOW" at the same time I was kicking myself for being such a dumb klutz. -- Michael James michael.james@csiro.au System Administrator voice: 02 6246 5040 CSIRO Bioinformatics Facility fax: 02 6246 5166
The Wednesday 2005-02-16 at 13:14 +1100, Michael James wrote:
Yes, but TIMTOWTDI (There is more than one way to do it) The standard Susehelp system comes with a serverside info to HTML translator, making info files browseable.
If you have your default suse apache setup just browse to: http://localhost/cgi-bin/info2html
for a complete linked list of info pages.
There is also another: http://localhost/cgi-bin/man2html but it doesn't work (suse 9.1): Server error! The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your request. Error message: Premature end of script headers: man2html If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster. Error 500 localhost Thu Feb 17 21:35:00 2005 Apache/2.0.49 (Linux/SuSE) This is suse 9.1, but I think it didn't work in 8.2 neither.
PS: I found this out the long way round.
Time ago, there was a direct link to this in the suse sample page for apache. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson
Carlos, On Thursday 17 February 2005 16:28, Carlos E. R. wrote:
The Wednesday 2005-02-16 at 13:14 +1100, Michael James wrote:
Yes, but TIMTOWTDI (There is more than one way to do it) ...
There is also another:
http://localhost/cgi-bin/man2html
but it doesn't work (suse 9.1):
Server error!
I just get a 404, which I suppose is consistent with this: % ll /srv/www/cgi-bin total 1100 -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 516212 2005-01-25 05:54 awstats.pl* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 519086 2005-01-28 03:55 htsearch* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 20807 2004-04-05 22:38 info2html* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1584 2004-04-05 22:38 info2html.conf drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2004-06-20 17:37 lib/ drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2004-06-20 17:37 plugins/ -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 45614 2004-04-06 11:14 webdot* What package supplies man2html?
The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your request.
...
This is suse 9.1, but I think it didn't work in 8.2 neither.
I, too, am running 9.1.
Carlos Robinson
Randall Schulz
The Thursday 2005-02-17 at 16:50 -0800, Randall R Schulz wrote:
There is also another:
http://localhost/cgi-bin/man2html
but it doesn't work (suse 9.1):
Server error!
I just get a 404, which I suppose is consistent with this:
% ll /srv/www/cgi-bin total 1100 -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 516212 2005-01-25 05:54 awstats.pl* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 519086 2005-01-28 03:55 htsearch* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 20807 2004-04-05 22:38 info2html* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1584 2004-04-05 22:38 info2html.conf drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2004-06-20 17:37 lib/ drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2004-06-20 17:37 plugins/ -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 45614 2004-04-06 11:14 webdot*
htsearch doesn't work either, by the way.
What package supplies man2html?
Funny: cer@nimrodel:~> rpm -q -f /srv/www/cgi-bin/man2html hylafax-4.1.8-24.4 It has a bug I noticed, but there must be more: /srv/www/cgi-bin/manpage: #MAN2HTML=/usr/local/httpd/cgi-bin/man2html #Cer MAN2HTML=/srv/www/cgi-bin/man2html ... #UNQUOTE=/usr/local/httpd/cgi-bin/unquote #Cer UNQUOTE=/srv/www/cgi-bin/unquote Now that I think, if it comes with hylafax... http://localhost4/hylafax/ Ah, it contains links like this one: http://localhost/cgi-bin/manpage?sendfax and it fails, the page doesn't render complete. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson
On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 11:50 am, Randall R Schulz wrote:
What package supplies man2html?
Would you believe hylafax? It's what rpm.pbone.net and pin suggest. -- Michael James michael.james@csiro.au System Administrator voice: 02 6246 5040 CSIRO Bioinformatics Facility fax: 02 6246 5166
* Randall R Schulz
I wanted to share with the list a "discovery" I made recently. As some may already know but I only just learned, the list of protocols / schemes (as in the label preceding the ':' in an address entered in the Konqueror location bar) is not only extensible, but quite extensive.
In particular, there's a scheme for displaying "info" files.
Those who routinely resort to the "man" command (often following the use of the "apropos" or "man -k" command) will often find themselves remanded to the info entry for complete documentation.
Furthermore, those who, like me, dislike the "info" program as a viewer for info files may be pleased to know that Konqueror has a protocol specifically for presenting info files. It presents info files in a form far more accessible than the info command itself. You can think of it as being an HTML conversion of a command's info files.
And, if you happen to prefer the command-line, there is pinfo which displays info files with cursor key navagation which is *much* easier to learn than the info keystroks/navagation scheme, imnsho. -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 http://wahoo.no-ip.org @ http://counter.li.org HOG # US1244711 Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/photos
On Tuesday 15 February 2005 19:11, Randall R Schulz wrote:
Hi,
I wanted to share with the list a "discovery" I made recently. As some may already know but I only just learned, the list of protocols / schemes (as in the label preceding the ':' in an address entered in the Konqueror location bar) is not only extensible, but quite extensive.
In particular, there's a scheme for displaying "info" files.
Those who routinely resort to the "man" command (often following the use of the "apropos" or "man -k" command) will often find themselves remanded to the info entry for complete documentation.
Furthermore, those who, like me, dislike the "info" program as a viewer for info files may be pleased to know that Konqueror has a protocol specifically for presenting info files. It presents info files in a form far more accessible than the info command itself. You can think of it as being an HTML conversion of a command's info files.
(At this point, I'll shamefacedly admit that until just today, when I decided to check out its info entry, I was laboring under the assumption, reinforced by the limited information included in its man page, that the Gnu "sed" command did not support extended regular expressions. Oh, how hard I've made my life by not looking into this much sooner!)
To see the complete list of Konqueror protocols configured for your system, run "kinfocenter" and select the "protocols" category. Some of the protocols include a documentation string that explains their use. If there's a KDE Menu entry for this, I don't know what it is. If someone out there does, please enlighten me.
Randall Schulz
This is good, but unfortunately it does not work for me. The problem is that I have setup my default browser to be firefox. And now, when I key in info:/xxx in Konqueror, it renders (I suppose) the info page, but then it pops up a box asking if I want to save the page, or open it with firefox. Save is not an option, and selecting to open in firefox invokes firefox, but sends it an URL of the type info:/xxx (as it have to). And firefox can not handle it, and displays that external application have to be launched. And clicking OK there does nothing. I'm using SuSE 9.1 with KDE 3.3.2 level"a" build, and FireFox 1.0. Any suggestions how to brake this magic circle (yeah, I can select konq to be default browser, but ...) Sunny -- Get Firefox http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=affiliates&id=10745&t=85
Sunny, On Tuesday 15 February 2005 20:10, Sunny wrote:
...
This is good, but unfortunately it does not work for me.
The problem is that I have setup my default browser to be firefox. And now, when I key in info:/xxx in Konqueror, it renders (I suppose) the info page, but then it pops up a box asking if I want to save the page, or open it with firefox. Save is not an option, and selecting to open in firefox invokes firefox, but sends it an URL of the type info:/xxx (as it have to). And firefox can not handle it, and displays that external application have to be launched. And clicking OK there does nothing.
That's odd. I have Mozilla set as my default browser, but this doesn't happen for me.
I'm using SuSE 9.1 with KDE 3.3.2 level"a" build, and FireFox 1.0.
Ditto for me.
Any suggestions how to brake this magic circle (yeah, I can select konq to be default browser, but ...)
Ugh. Konqueror has lots of good features, but I'm a Mozilla guy. I only use Konqueror for features unique to it.
Sunny
Randall Schulz
A swifter way than opening up konqueror is ALT-F2 then ##(the info/man page you want). -- http://www.snowblink.co.uk/
Jonathan, On Tuesday 15 February 2005 21:15, Jonathan Lim wrote:
A swifter way than opening up konqueror is ALT-F2 then ##(the info/man page you want).
Now _that_ sends me to Mozilla, which cannot handle it, of course. Besides, I don't like lots of new windows. I prime my Mozilla with 12 tabs and have four pre-opened in Konqueror along with five Konsole tabs plus one su tab. Randall Schulz
participants (6)
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Carlos E. R. -
Jonathan Lim -
Michael James -
Patrick Shanahan -
Randall R Schulz -
Sunny