As developers we have all interacted with an obscure-looking documentation system that is invoked with an incantation that starts with man
, for instance man less
(no pun intended).
While we have moved on to more sophisticated documentation mediums with graphics and etc, man
is still alive and actually getting better (newly added hyperlink support).
It wasn't until I had to write a manpage for my project that I dived deeper into its capabilities and limits.
Unlike its modern peers, man
runs in a text-only medium (given the nature of terminals). Also, none of the manpages I had come across in past had (ascii) diagrams in them. So I asked if it is possible to show text art in man pages. The short answer is: yes!
Below is a collection of figures from arttime's manpage. It can be opened with arttime -m
or man arttime
from terminal. You can also see arttime's manpage (without colors) in your web browser: arttime manwebpage.
Happy man-paging!
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