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@PicoMitchell
Last active August 22, 2024 19:27
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Display "man" pages as PDFs on macOS, with nice filenames and caching.
#!/bin/sh
man2pdf() {
##
## Created by Pico Mitchell (of Random Applications) on 11/16/22
##
## https://gist.github.com/PicoMitchell/619c12fd6a53ae6ec657514915d4edf9
##
## MIT License
##
## Copyright (c) 2022 Pico Mitchell (Random Applications)
##
## Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),
## to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
## and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
##
## The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
##
## THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
## FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
## WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
##
man_pdf_folder_base_path="/private/tmp/man PDFs" # Set this path to wherever you want the man page PDFs to be saved to (it doesn't have to be a temporary location).
this_man_path="$(/usr/bin/man -w "$@" 2> /dev/null)"
if [ -f "${this_man_path}" ]; then
man_pdf_folder_os_path="${man_pdf_folder_base_path}/$(/usr/bin/sw_vers -productVersion) ($(/usr/bin/sw_vers -buildVersion))"
# Save every man page PDF into a sub-folder for the current OS version (and build) since man pages can be updated between
# OS versions, and don't want to retrieve an old cached version from a preivous OS (when not saving to a temporary location).
if [ ! -d "${man_pdf_folder_os_path}" ]; then
if [ -d "${man_pdf_folder_base_path}" ]; then
# If the man PDFs base path exists, but not the current OS sub-folder, that likely means that there has been an OS update since the last run,
# so clear the cache of the old man PDFs from the previous OS version by deleting the base path which will be re-created when the new latest OS sub-folder is created below.
/bin/rm -rf "${man_pdf_folder_base_path}"
fi
/bin/mkdir -p "${man_pdf_folder_os_path}"
fi
this_man_filename="${this_man_path##*/}"
this_man_section="${this_man_filename#*.}"
this_man_filename="${this_man_filename%.*}"
if [ "${this_man_section}" != '1' ]; then
this_man_filename="${this_man_filename} (${this_man_section})"
fi
this_man_pdf_path="${man_pdf_folder_os_path}/man ${this_man_filename}.pdf"
if [ ! -f "${this_man_pdf_path}" ]; then
/usr/bin/mandoc -T pdf "${this_man_path}" > "${this_man_pdf_path}"
fi
/usr/bin/open "${this_man_pdf_path}"
else
/usr/bin/man "$@" # If the man page didn't exist, run the actual "man" command with the passed arguments to show any relevant output or error.
fi
}
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