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Code by Kevin
Manpower is a Mac OS X graphical user interface to the main system of Unix software documentation, the man page. Man pages are concise but thorough descriptions of the functionality and methods of the various Unix command-line programs; there may be hundreds of such programs installed on a Unix or Linux system. Man pages are typically accessed in the Unix terminal by typing the phrase "man program," with "program" being the specific name of the Unix tool you are trying to learn more about.
While accessing the man page system in this manner is efficient, it has limitations. It
While accessing the man page system in this manner is efficient, it has limitations. It
What's New
Version 4.1.1: Release notes were unavailable when this listing was updated.
Requirements
Intel, Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later.
Intel, Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later.
Manpower User Discussion (Write a Review)
Overall:
(3)
(3)
Displaying 1-10 of 11
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Manpower is a Mac OS X graphical user interface to the main system of Unix software documentation, the man page. Man pages are concise but thorough descriptions of the functionality and methods of the various Unix command-line programs; there may be hundreds of such programs installed on a Unix or Linux system. Man pages are typically accessed in the Unix terminal by typing the phrase "man program," with "program" being the specific name of the Unix tool you are trying to learn more about.
While accessing the man page system in this manner is efficient, it has limitations. It is difficult to read documentation in the Unix console; the type is usually very small, and can only be read one screen at a time, making scrolling and skimming through the material a tedious process. Manpower provides a simple, elegant three-pane interface that makes reading man pages as easy as reading e-mail.
Manpower compared to Terminal and other man page viewers:
While accessing the man page system in this manner is efficient, it has limitations. It is difficult to read documentation in the Unix console; the type is usually very small, and can only be read one screen at a time, making scrolling and skimming through the material a tedious process. Manpower provides a simple, elegant three-pane interface that makes reading man pages as easy as reading e-mail.
Manpower compared to Terminal and other man page viewers:
- Clean, three-pane interface: Reading man pages is as easy as reading e-mail.
- Search, browse, display, and save new man pages in a single window.
- Thorough user documentation via the "Help" menu.
Copyright © 2012 MacUpdate LLC
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+18
With Bwana installed, type in Safari's location field (where you'd type http://...) man:whatever, e.g. man:ls, and if it has a man page it'll be presented in a standard Safari window, nicely typeset and scrollable. Links in the man page to man pages for other UNIX resource are clickable, especially handy for See Also items and getting to config file man pages.
If you run the Bwana application itself, you can request it display an index of all man pages for browsing (takes a few minutes, so patience required; the next time you request the index, it'll be quite fast).
+2
+2
David Costa reviewed on 11 Jun 2011
I've uninstalled and installed the app several times. the problem persists.
I initiated the process at Mac App Store Support to get refunded of the 19.99 euros I spent.
I'm using MAC OS X 10.6.7 in the most recent MacBook Air 13''.
+57
Downloaded this from the developer's website and couldn't get it to work. It briefly brought up a couple small malformed windows before yielding the main screen, and then a sheet was produced explaining that a demo period was in effect and it had a couple buttons for yes/no asking to buy it. I clicked on No because I wanted to try it and it didn't respond! It needed force quitting. Tried again, same deal. This is not ready for prime time yet...
+22
-1
+111
Psychos reviewed on 16 Mar 2010
Inside the app: there are 2 panes. There are visually 3 panes; however, they're arranged as the man section as the first part, then the man page short name and description as two more panes that line up with each other.
The single potentially useful feature I see is bookmarks. However, I ran into bugs adding bookmarks, and there are also no shortcuts set for adding/removing/displaying bookmarks. The one category that I give this app anything other than a 1 (worst) for is in stability, since it hasn't crashed on me, frozen up, or anything else. Thus it gets an automatic 3 there. Not that that means much, since 90% of "Hello World" apps would get a 3 or better.
Really, anyone using this app knows how to run 'man.' These man pages are obviously not useful if you don't know about Unix programming, and if you do, you would not be using this program.
*IF* the bookmarks section worked well (and that means things like cross-referencing with other manpages, etc), I might find this software to be worth $5 or less. But $20? Yeah, umm...no.
-4
+111
Enough people have posted how to do this for free, in less time than it would take you to even read this page. Man pages for pretty much all of these tools are on the web, as well.
+1
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+127
Open a Terminal window.
Enter "man -t fubar | open -a -f Preview" (without the quotes.)
Yes, it involves some text entry, but if you're reading man pages you need to do that anyway.
Besides ManOpen, another free alternative to be aware of is Bwana.
(transposed the f/a switches)
+17
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iGaucho reviewed on 18 May 2008
+57
MBP Snow Leopard 64-bit
+1