Basic GUI man page browser/viewer

greenjeans · 2026-07-02 02:04:32

Absolutely caveman simple GUI tool to search and view man pages. The top bar is for search and results appear in the main pane for choosing and opening, the bottom bar is for if you already know the name of the page and just want to open it. You can have multiple pages open, they are spawned by the main C+GTK window as separate instances of a yad text-info dialog, nice and readable. It uses apropos to search and only requires yad and gtk. Finished up some more tweaks today, now just need to test for a few days before posting it up on git and making a package. Tiny binary of 28k, only about 250 lines of code so it's nice and fast, and apropos does a nice job of searching.

EDIT: Up on git now and .deb package on sourceforge:

https://git.devuan.org/greenjeans/vuuman

https://sourceforge.net/projects/vuu-do … ps/VuuMan/

Pics have been re-sized to be smaller and load faster for forums, so you can't click through for a larger view

Last edited by greenjeans (2026-07-02 16:11:28)

greenjeans · 2026-07-02 16:12:04

Edited the OP with links, up on git now and also a .deb package on SF.

Sector11 · 2026-07-02 16:12:42

Looks interesting. And I saw that xz thing and went searching as it's something new to me.

So this is OFF TOPIC . but because of the xz seen in the example of the OP.

The Internet Was Weeks Away From Disaster and No One Knew and all based on xz.

WAY above my paygrade but a very interesting and educational watch.

Also a side note to people that think and claim Windows is more popular than Linux, "watch it and weep!"

greenjeans wrote:

Edited the OP with links, up on git now and also a .deb package on SF.

Thank you!

I see Vuu-do on SF not VuuMan

EDIT: OK the SF link to VuuMan is in the GIT page.

Last edited by Sector11 (2026-07-02 16:43:08)

Sector11 · 2026-07-02 17:26:27

Suggestion for a tweak:

Maybe limit the [search] bar to only search for programs with the entered value.

I punched in:

[co     ]

looking for conky, vuuman filled up with 16 entries to start with and 11 of them do not have "co" in the program name - I was looking for conky.

OOPS! Reading what was there I had a brain far -errr- burp.

[command line          ]

HOT DAMN!!!!!! Now this I LIKE!

Thank you greengeans, very nice!

DeepDayze · 2026-07-02 17:45:11

Tried out this neat app and me likey. Nice work, just like your AlsaTune and VuuPaper apps.

greenjeans · 2026-07-03 16:36:17

Thanks so much for the kind words! Was hoping someone might find it useful, been using it myself now for 3 days and it's my go-to when I need to pull up man pages, the search function is cool because it pulls up a list of related pages quite often, so it makes cross referencing much faster than I could do just using a terminal.

Sector11 · 2026-07-05 02:15:34

> so it makes cross referencing much faster than I could do just using a terminal.

And that's one of it's best points!

Love it

greenjeans · 2026-07-05 17:31:42

The irony of a man-page viewer not having a man page of it's own was pointed out to me, lol, so I made one, not any additional info in there, just basic usage plus some see-also's at the bottom pointing to man, mandb, and apropos. I'll include it when next I package again but it's up now on the git page and a download of the .gz on SF.

WizardofCOR · 2026-07-06 01:21:10

greenjeans wrote:

The irony of a man-page viewer not having a man page of it's own

Ok, I gotta admit that gave me a chuckle. But here we are, with yet another cool utility from greenjeans.
Thank you, sir!

Sector11 · 2026-07-06 18:08:53

WizardofCOR wrote:

greenjeans wrote:
The irony of a man-page viewer not having a man page of it's own
Ok, I gotta admit that gave me a chuckle. But here we are, with yet another cool utility from greenjeans.
Thank you, sir!

Yeah, me too.

But it does work as advertised.

greenjeans · Today 15:19:47

7-10-2026 - New version 1.0-1 up now, added the man page and also added simple icons for it as the generic "info" icon
I was using doesn't look so good in some other icon sets. I'm leaving the man page archive up for people who have the first
version and just want it and don't need/want the icons, there are no changes to function in this version so no need to upgrade if
you don't want to. Also leaving up the original version for folks who don't need either new addition.

#1 2026-07-02 02:04:32

Basic GUI man page browser/viewer

#2 2026-07-02 16:12:04

Re: Basic GUI man page browser/viewer

#3 2026-07-02 16:12:42

Re: Basic GUI man page browser/viewer

#4 2026-07-02 17:26:27

Re: Basic GUI man page browser/viewer

#5 2026-07-02 17:45:11

Re: Basic GUI man page browser/viewer

#6 2026-07-03 16:36:17

Re: Basic GUI man page browser/viewer

#7 2026-07-05 02:15:34

Re: Basic GUI man page browser/viewer

#8 2026-07-05 17:31:42

Re: Basic GUI man page browser/viewer

#9 2026-07-06 01:21:10

Re: Basic GUI man page browser/viewer

#10 2026-07-06 18:08:53

Re: Basic GUI man page browser/viewer

#11 Today 15:19:47

Re: Basic GUI man page browser/viewer

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