MacOS has a set of defined URLs for manpages under x-man-page://command.
You can open these from a web browser or directly from Terminal with the command open x-man-page://command, which opens a nice yellow background reader. I am trying to find out what this is, and how I can open other documents in it (like local text files for example).
Under Terminal > Preferences > Profiles you can see there is a Man Page profile, and you can launch a new Terminal window with this profile, so I would assume it is just a Terminal window that the text is written to and then left open (especially as it says [PROCESS COMPLETED] at the bottom of the page).
How would I open a new Terminal window with a specific profile, print text to it and leave it open in the same way?
For example, doing the same to open a .txt in Preview (I am on Catalina so this still works) I can use groff -man -Tps filename.txt | open -f -a Preview. I use this with extracted python help() pages for example. But I would prefer if I could open this in the yellow Terminal reader or window instead of Preview instead.
Edit:
Using the AppleScript provided by @Philippe this function can open most text files in this "reader" view:
function reader {
if [[ "$1" = /* ]]; then
osascript ~/Code/scripts/xman_window.scpt "cat $1"
elif [[ "$1" = ~/* ]]; then
osascript ~/Code/scripts/xman_window.scpt "cat ${1/#\~/$HOME}"
else
osascript ~/Code/scripts/xman_window.scpt "cat $(pwd)/$1"
fi
}
You can use Applescript, save following script to test.scpt:
on run {command}
tell application "Terminal"
do script "clear;printf '\\e[3J'; " & command & "; kill -9 $$"
set current settings of front window to settings set "Man page"
delay 1
tell application "System Events" to keystroke (ASCII character 30) using {command down}
end tell
end run
run it with :
osascript test.scpt "man -P cat ls"