hman(1)

📦
version 1.6g · 3 versions
, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 hman(1) — the manual page for hman, bestie 💖

okay so this is the page for hman, which lives in the General Commands Manual section, and honestly? she's a little legend. let's get into it 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

hman — browse the on-line manual pages 👑

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

hman [ -P browser ] [ -H host ] [ section ] name
hman [ -P browser ] [ -H host ] [ section ] [ index ]

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so like. the hman script is basically a lil interface to man2html(1) — you throw man page requests at it from the command line and it shows you the output in your favourite browser. iconic behaviour, no notes 💅

the whole vibe is giving man(1), on purpose, so that a ton of people will be able to just alias hman to man and go about their day. lowkey genius.

and here's the fun part: if the browser you're using is netscape, and an incarnation of netscape is already running, then hman will pass the request straight to that existing browser instead of opening a whole new one. sharing is caring 🦋

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -P browser — tell it which browser to use, like lynx, xmosaic, arena, chimera, netscape, amaya, ... (the list goes on, she's flexible). this option overrides the MANHTMLPAGER environment variable, so it wins the argument fr fr. the default is sensible-browser. there's also a special value, lynxcgi, which you can use for the non-httpd version of lynx — but ⚠️ that requires the lynx(1) command to actually be installed and appropriately configured, so don't come crying to me if it doesn't work, bestie 😭
  • -H host — tell it which host to get the man pages from. this option overrides the MANHTMLHOST environment variable. the default is localhost 🏠

✨ ENVIRONMENT ✨

  • MANHTMLPAGER — the default browser to use is selected using this environment variable. it's the vibe-setter for your browser choice ✨
  • MANHTMLHOST — the default host to use is selected using this environment variable. it's the vibe-setter for where your man pages come from 🌈

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

man(1), man2html(1), arena(1), lynx(1), sensible-browser(1), netscape(1), xmosaic(1), glimpse(1)

and also this lil link, she's old but she's still slaying:

http://www.mcom.com/newsref/std/x-remote.html

ngl the whole "pass the request to the existing netscape" thing is the real main character energy of this page. iykyk 💀

and that's the tea, bestie 🍓 — this page was dated 19 January 1998, and it belongs to hman(1), the General Commands Manual's own little browser-launcher queen. go forth and alias her to man, she can handle it 💜👑

📦 where this page comes from