How to view man pages in a web browser?

Question

Which .conf file do I need to edit in order to view man pages in a web browser? I'd like to use Google Chrome to do this.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

One way to do this is to put the following command in ~/.profile:

export PAGER="col -b  | open -a /Applications/Safari.app -f"

The PAGER environmental variable controls what program man uses to display man pages. the col command removes all of the backspace-formatting from the man page. The open command saves the output as a temporary text file and opens it with Safari.app.

Or you can edit the PAGER variable in /private/etc/man.conf. You could also probably edit the NROFF variable and eliminate the need to use col -b. See the man page for man.conf.

Answer 2

http://www.bruji.com/bwana/ is exactly what you're looking for.

Answer 3

You can add a function to your ~/.profile:

function gman {
     man "$1" | col -b > "/tmp/$1"
     open -a "/Applications/Google Chrome.app" "/tmp/$1"
}