Xless(1x)

💖 XLESS 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because i'm about to put you onto xless — the file browsing program for the X Window System, manual section 1x. it's giving "i read files and i look cute doing it." no cap. 🦋

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

xless [-f] [-toolkitoption ...] [filename ...]

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so basically xless pops up a window on the display you specified, and inside that window is the file you named on the command line — or whatever you piped in from stdin. 💅 you can scroll through the whole thing with the scrollbar sitting on the left side of the window. it's so easy it's honestly rude. xless also takes input from the standard input, in case you were wondering. 👑

and then there's the toolbox on the right side of the window, which is lowkey the main character, because it has ALL of these:

• pop up a help window 🫶
• search a specified pattern 🔍
• search the next occurance of the above specified pattern (yes, that's how the original spells it, we respect the spelling ✨)
• open a session of the editor — the one specified in the environment variable EDITOR — on the current file
• reload the current file
• change file in the current window
• open a new xless window to display the specified file
• print the current file
• close the current window

if you want further info on using xless, please read the online help information, bestie. the rest of this manual page is gonna discuss customization of xless to suit the needs of a particular user. it's giving bespoke. it's giving tailored. 💜

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

xless is build upon the X Toolkit (Xt) — okay that's the original's grammar, "build" not "built", i don't make the rules — and as such it understands all the normal command line options, as described in X(1). it also supports these:

• -follow — continually check the file for new input, so that xless behaves like tail -f. 🔥
• -f — alias for -f. (yes. literally that. i'm not touching it. the manpage said it, i'm saying it, we're all saying it together. 💀)
• -help — print a list of valid options.
• -version — print the version number of this xless executable.

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👑 WIDGET AND RESOURCE NAMES 👑

on top of the usual widget resources, xless has these application resources, and you're gonna want to know all of them:

• standardFont — the default font to be used if any of the specified fonts are available.
• textFont — the fonts to use for the text.
• labelFont — the fonts to use for labels in dialog boxes.
• buttonFont — the fonts to use for labels on buttons.
• standardCur — the cursors to use in the main button window with the Quit and Help commands.
• dialogCur — the cursors to use in the toolbox and dialog box windows.
• helpFile — name of a file to use instead of the system default helpfile.
• editor — name of editor to invoke (if neither VISUAL nor EDITOR environment variable is set).
• editorDoesWindows — set to TRUE if your editor brings up its own window (xedit or GNU emacs, for example.) 🪟
• printCommand — command string used to print the current file. the name of the file is simply appended to this string. (enscript -G is nice, if you've got it.) 🖨️
• maxWindows — maximum number of windows which xless will display at one time. set this to zero if you don't want a limit. (this is a good thing to set if you tend to run xless * in directories with lots of files.) 😭
• quitButton — set to TRUE if you want a Quit button on every window which, when clicked, will quit every window started from this copy of xless. the default is FALSE.
• sizeToFit — set to TRUE if you want text windows to be only as big as they need to be, up to the maximum size specified by 'geometry'.
• removePath — set to TRUE if you want the directory portion of the file path removed. for example, a path like /usr/src/X11/xless/main.c would be shortened to main.c. the default is TRUE.
• defaultSearchType — default method used to search the text (invoked from the Search button). possible values are ExactMatch (which is the default), CaseInsensitive and RegularExpression. 🔍
• monitorFile — set to TRUE if you want the file to be continually checked for new input (so that xless behaves like tail -f). the default is FALSE.

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🌈 COLOR RESOURCES 🌈

if you have a color display and you're running at least X11R5, you may want to add a line like this to your personal resources file:

#ifdef COLOR
*customization: -color
#endif

this will allow you to get the color-related resources for not only xless, but for every program which sets up its own color resources. obsessed. 🎨✨

versions of X earlier than X11R5 don't support the customization resource. if you're on one of those, you'll have to include the color resources in your personal resources file. sorry bestie, that's just the vibe check result. 😔

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

X(1), X(8C), more(1), less(1)

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💀 BUGS 💀

there probably are some.

ngl that's the most honest sentence in the whole manpage and i respect it so much.

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🌟 AUTHOR 🌟

Dave Glowacki (UC Berkeley Software Warehouse) <dglo@CS.Berkeley.EDU>

originally by Carlo Lisa (MIT Project Athena) from xmore written by Chris Peterson (MIT Project Athena). legends only, fr fr. 👑

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! this one shipped as part of X Version 11, dated 6 June 1993, and it lives in the manual as Xless(1x). go forth and browse some files, you absolute icon. 💖✨🎀🦋🌸💅🫶