Bwana is a manual page viewer for your Browser. It parses man pages in real time to provide the most up to date pages in an easy to read format. The pages have links to other man pages, http and email references--the way man pages should have been from the start.
What's new in Bwana
Version 2.8:
Mojave MacOS 10.14 support
64 bit support
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To add man paths to your system include them in man configuration file located in /usr/share/misc/man.conf. The format for including another path is a new line with: MANPATH /usr/share/mynewpath. To open a temporary page in a path you don't want to include as part of your man configuration then pass the entire path to Bwana with man:/Users/myuser/Desktop/mansource.1 or man:///Users/myuser/Desktop/mansource.1
The herein download DMG identifies itself as Bwana v2.8.1, and the application, when open, identifies itself as Bwana 2.8.1. Nevertheless, the Finder's GetInfo identifies it as v2.8
Hope the developer can add applescript support, so that I can write a command line script to open manpage in the terminal like "bwana something".
Anyway, Bwana is the one of my indispensible apps to easily convert manpage to webpage. Thanks to the author.
Excellent app! The best way I've found to view man pages. I'm slowly learning UNIX, and having Bwana available to quickly pop up a man page is great. Even better is that Bwana provides hyperlinks to other man pages ('cuz I often start out with the wrong command and need to find the correct one).
To add man paths to your system include them in man configuration file located in /usr/share/misc/man.conf. The format for including another path is a new line with: MANPATH /usr/share/mynewpath. To open a temporary page in a path you don't want to include as part of your man configuration then pass the entire path to Bwana with man:/Users/myuser/Desktop/mansource.1 or man:///Users/myuser/Desktop/mansource.1
This is a great program but it seems not to be using MANPATH because I can't make it find any of the Darwinports / fink installed manual pages.
This really limits the usefulness for me
The new version is even better than the previous, and as you can see below, I really liked the previous version. The two main improvements as far as I'm concerned are the addition af a search box on each results page, and the link to the "index" page. Fabulous stuff!
I've seen several other ways of reading man pages that don't involve going to Terminal.app, but Bwana is far and away the best method. I virtually always have Safari open, so man pages are seldom more than a click away. Bwana formats the man pages very nicely, and adds links to other man pages. As nice as Bwana is, it's a shame that most man pages are so poorly written. Bwana deserves better!
I think Bwana is really neat, but I think it would be even better if it was done as an internet plugin. That way it would work in all browsers that support internet plugins, it would work transparently in browsers (i.e. no more URL bar going blank, then sitting and waiting and it magically changing to a temporary HTML file).
I like it a lot! It was so easy to set up. Drag it to your hard drive (mine's in /Applications/Utilities like they suggested) and you're done!
A couple of things I'd like to see:
- (IMO) the URL should still say 'man:diff' instead of the PATH to the man file (although this could be configurable and/or the PATH could display at the top of the man'd page.
- the URL in the readme file has a ';' instead of a ':' (http;//www.bruji.com/)
- the bruji.com has no entry for Bwana--just their bread & butter products (I like the name now that I understand it!)
Great utility! Man pages look really nice, Safari is always opened in my desktop so Bwana is available right there at the tip of your fingers, and links to mentioned man pages are very useful.
As a side note, I call it via Sogudi, this way I can type a space instead of a colon (I prefer it and in addition it is consistent with the rest of shortcuts), and can easily have a perldoc alias for man, which looks more familiar to me for Perl documentation.
Nearly perfect!
"man:X" now works.
But by simply typing "man:" X(7) is not indexed.
Would be so nice if I could search the man pages from the seach bar.
Still not looking in /usr/local/share/man I guess.
Perhaps you can pay attention to user's settings by issuing /usr/bin/manpath or read /etc/manpath.config directly. And of course there is always MANPATH environment variable.
I have installed newer man as /usr/local/bin/man. In this case /usr/local/bin/man -w might work.
This update seems to be broken. I tried 'man:growlnotify' and got absolutely no feedback. No manpage, no Not Found page, nothing. man:ls works, as does man:sh, but apparently /usr/local/man still isn't in the list of paths to search (please use manpath!) and the Not Found functionality is broken. Either that, or the growlnotiify manpage is just magical and kills Bwana.
Interesting, but it's not using `manpath' to locate the manpages. When I do man:growlnotify (growlnotify's manpage being installed in /usr/local/man/man1) it finds nothing.
This little piece of software is quite easy to use yet useful. I must mention the existence of ManOpen but ManOpen does not support coloring.
Developer, now go for the info files please.
Good idea. But man pages open in the current Safari window, rather than either opening a new window or a new tab according to the Safari preferences, which is just Wrong. And it doesn't work at all if there isn't a Safari window open for it to hijack. Needs some work.
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Question: Every time I run a man search in v 2.7 or 2.8 I get a "Do you want to allow this page to open "Bwana.app"?" pop-up. Is it necessary?