Ubuntu Manpage: man2html - format a manual page in html

NAME

       man2html - format a manual page in html

SYNOPSIS

       man2html [options] [file]

DESCRIPTION

       man2html  converts  a manual page as found in file (or stdin, in case no file argument, or
       the argument "-", is given) from man-style nroff into  html,  and  prints  the  result  on
       stdout.   It  does  support  tbl  but  does  not know about eqn.  The exit status is 0. If
       something goes wrong, an error page is printed on stdout.

       This can be used as a stand-alone utility, but is mainly  intended  as  an  auxiliary,  to
       enable  users  to  browse their man pages using a html browser like lynx(1), xmosaic(1) or
       netscape(1).

       The main part of man2html  is  the  troff-to-html  engine  written  by  Richard  Verhoeven
       (rcb5@win.tue.nl).  It adds hyperlinks for the following constructs:

       foo(3x)           "http://localhost/cgi-bin/man/man2html?3x+foo"
       method://string   "method://string"
       www.host.name     "http://www.host.name"
       ftp.host.name     "ftp://ftp.host.name"
       name@host         "mailto:name@host"
       <string.h>        "file:/usr/include/string.h"

       (The  first  of these can be tuned by options - see below.)  No lookup is done - the links
       generated need not exist.  Also an index with internal hyperlinks to the various  sections
       is generated, so that it is easier to find one's way in large man pages like bash(1).

OPTIONS

When reading from stdin, it is not always clear how to do .so expansion. The -D option
allows a script to define the working directory.

-D pathname
Strip the last two parts from the pathname, and do a chdir(dir) before starting the
conversion.

The -E option allows the easy generation of error messages from a cgi script.

-E string
Output an error page containing the given error message.

The general form of a hyperlink generated for a man page reference is

<method:cgipath><man2htmlpath><separator><manpage>

with a default as shown above. The parts of this hyperlink are set using the various
options.

-h Set method:cgipath to http://localhost.

-H host[.domain][:port]
Set method:cgipath to http://host.domain:port.

-l Set method:cgipath to lynxcgi:/usr/lib.

-L dir Set method:cgipath to lynxcgi:dir.

-M man2htmlpath
Set the man2htmlpath to use. The default is /cgi-bin/man/man2html.

-p Set separator to '/'.

-q Set separator to '?'. This is the default.

-r Use relative html paths, instead of cgi-bin paths.

On a machine without running httpd, one can use lynx to browse the man pages, using the
lynxcgi method. When some http daemon is running, lynx, or any other browser, can be used
to browse the man pages, using the http method. The option -l (for `lynxcgi') selects the
former behaviour. With it, the default cgipath is /usr/lib.

In general, a cgi script can be called by

<path_to_script>/<more_path>?<query>

and the environment variables PATH_INFO and QUERY_STRING will be set to <more_path> and
<query>, respectively. Since lynxcgi does not handle the PATH_INFO part, we generate
hyperlinks with `?' as a separator by default. The option -p (for `path') selects '/' as
a separator, while the option -q (for `query') selects '?' as a separator.

The option -H host will specify the host to use (instead of localhost). A cgi script
could use

man2html -H $SERVER_NAME

if the variable SERVER_NAME is set. This would allow your machine to act as a server and
export man pages.

BUGS

       There are many heuristics.  The output will not always be  perfect.   The  lynxcgi  method
       will  not  work  if  lynx  was  compiled  without  selecting support for it.  There may be
       problems with security.

AUTHOR