mangl

Mangl is a graphical man page viewer based on the mandoc library (https://mandoc.bsd.lv/).

It uses OpenGL with GLFW to display man pages with clickable hyperlinks and smooth scrolling.

Features:

• searching of man pages
• hyperlinks to other man pages
• search withing a man page
• browsing history
• colored text
• truetype support
• draggable scrollbar
• keyboard and mouse interaction

Building

Install prerequisites if necessary (pkg-config, zlib, OpenGL, GLFW and FreeType headers and libraries). On Debian systems run:

sudo apt install pkg-config libz-dev libgl-dev libglfw3-dev libfreetype6-dev

Then, run the usual

./configure
make

If it fails, please check the Makefile for proper inclusion of OpenGL libraries.

Run

sudo make install

to copy the executable to /usr/local/bin/ or copy and use the mangl binary as you like.

Keyboard & mouse commands

• scrolling one step: j, k, up-arrow, down-arrow
• scrolling one whole page: space, shift-space, page-up, page-down
• scrolling to the beginning or the end of the man page: gg, G, Home, End
• to go to the previous man page: b, escape, right-mouse-click
• to go to the next man page: left-mouse-click on the link, f to go to the page opened before going back
• to search within a man page: / to initiate a search, escape to cancel a search, enter to commit the search, n and N to move between search results, search emulates vim's smartcase feature (use case sensitive search if the term includes uppercase letters)
• to go to search screen: Ctrl-f
• to quit: q, Ctrl-c, Ctrl-d

~/.manglrc

Configuration can be specified with ~/.manglrc file. Here is an example (reproduces default settings):

font: Anonymous Pro
font_size: 10
gui_scale: 1
line_spacing: 1
initial_window_rows: 40
color_background: #151515
color_foreground: #fdfde8
color_bold: #a4d4f1
color_italic: #ffce79
color_dim: #7b7b7b
color_scrollbar_background: #262626
color_scrollbar_thumb: #454545
color_scrollbar_thumb_hover: #545454
color_link: #4515ff
color_gui_1: #ebb470
color_gui_2: #8fbfdc
color_error: #ff1515
color_searches: #1515ff
color_search_selected: #15ff15

font parameter uses the fc-match external program to find the font file. The font file can also be specified directly.

Command line arguments

mangl     - open the viewer in search mode
mangl [man page name] - open the viewer in man page mode with man page opened
mangl [section name] [man page name] - open the man page from the specified section, e.g. mangl 3 printf