This is documentation for pinfo, version 0.6.4. Edition 0.2.1, date 1 Dec 2001.

Copyright 2000 © Przemek Borys

pborys@dione.ids.pl, http://zeus.polsl.gliwice.pl/~pborys/

This documentation is for pinfo, version 0.6.4.

Original manpage written on 21 Mar 1999 by Przemek Borys, pborys@dione.ids.pl, http://zeus.polsl.gliwice.pl/~pborys/.

Translated to Texinfo by Stanislav Kuchar, thorn@slonik.sk, http://slonik.sk/ on 1 Dec 2001.

Invoking
********

pinfo [OPTIONS] [INFO_PAGE]

pinfo is a program for viewing info files. You specify which page you want to read by passing it an INFO_PAGE argument. This argumen t contains the name of an info page (i.e. bash). The program will then (by default) search for it in the current diectory, /usr/share/info, /usr/info, /usr/local/share/info, /usr/local/info, and /opt/info. Other searchpath may be specified in configfile or via INFOPATH environmental variable. Pinfo will also automaticaly add the suffix -info, -info.Z, -info.gz, or -info.bz2. At present other suffixes are not recognized, but you can easily add them to the function openinfo() in filehandling_functions.c.

When the search for info pages fails, man is called with the INFO_PAGE argument, and it's output is parsed by pinfo. This means that when you don't have the appropriate info page, but have a man page instead; the man page will be viewed.

When no INFO_PAGE is specified, the default dir page is shown.

Supported OPTIONS are

-h, --help
     print help information and exit

-v, --version
     print version information and exit

-m, --manual
     uses manual page instead of info by default. (pinfo -m could be used as a manual pager). Warning: Everything what follows this option is passed to the man program. Don't be confused if pinfo options, which followed -m don't work. When using this option, pinfo does not parse the info options as ussual! It invokes the man part of program.

     You can also call the man function of pinfo in another way. When pinfo is called with an argv[0] (the program file name), which contains the word man in it's name, the man functions are enabled automatically.

     Previously there was a symlink to pinfo, called pman, but I had to remove it from the distribution, since it's name was in conflict with some other utility. Anyway, you can feel free to create such a link if you wish.

-r, --raw-filename
     uses a raw filename first (i.e.  the name which you specified as infopage is considered to be a real file in the specified location).

-f, --file
     Same as '-r'.

-a, --apropos
     if this is set, apropos is called when no man or info page could be found.

-c, --cut-man-headers
     if this is set, man parsing code will try to cut out the repeated man headers. Use with care. ;)

-s, --squeeze-lines
     cut empty lines from manual pages. This option enables autocutting of every repeated newline in a manual page.

-t, --force-manual-tag-table
     forces manual detection of tag table. This allows you to view info pages, which may be corrupted.  (as i.e.  version of jed's pages, shipped with RH5.0). The tag table corruption ussualy appears in that the info links, which you follow, move you to quite unexpected nodes.

--node=NODENAME, --node NODENAME
     Go to the node NODENAME of info file. Since 0.6.7 it is also possible to specify nodes as in standalone info via filenames, like `(gcc)Introduction'.

--rcfile=FILENAME, --node FILENAME
     Use alternate rcfile.

-l, --long-manual-links
     Use long link names in manuals.  On some systems the manual hierarchy is divided into subsections like 3ncurses, etc, while on other systems all belongs to section 3. If this option is what your system is like, feel free to use it.

-x, --clear-at-exit
     Clear screen at exit.

The options are handled by GNU getopt, so you can here as in other programs abbreviate the option names to the minimal number of characters by which the options differ.

Warning! If you do not have getopt, these options will not work!

Configuration
*************

Configuration file
==================

Just take a look at the example config file, see Example config file, and at the key descriptions, see Keys. Keys available in manual viewer differ a bit from the keys available in info viewer.

There are configuration files called ~/.pinforc and [prefix]/etc/pinforc, for local and global configuration (where prefix is the prefix of the directory, where pinfo is installed, i.e. /usr/local, or /usr).

Color
-----

First you must enter a color name (all available color names are present in the example, see Example config file, and they're self explanatory, I think.

There is also a special color COLOR_DEFAULT, which stands for transparency). Then you enter the foreground color, and the background color.

The BOLD attribute means that we want the foreground color to be highlighted. (i.e.  lightblue, lightgreen).  BLINK attribute is the blinking attribute, or highlighted background in some other configurations.

Keys
----

Now let's move to the key definitions. Here we first put a key name (again all keys are present in the example); then we enter it's value -- either surrounded by apostrophes, or a keycode number (like in KEY_REFRESH_1), or its mnemonic code name if it's a special key (like i.e.  in KEY_FOLLOWLINK_1).

If you wish to specify key by code value, use the supplied program 'testkey' to obtain the needed value. It mainly is a feature, when you want to add some ctrl+letter keybindings, and similar.

For each function you can bind two keys, i.e.  you could bind both Enter and Cursor Right to the FollowLink-function.  As you can see in the example above, the two key names are KEY_FOLLOWLINK_1 and KEY_FOLLOWLINK_2.

Keybindings
...........

Here's an explanation of the key names:

KEY_TOTALSEARCH_1
     Key for searching through all nodes of info file.

KEY_TOTALSEARCH_2
     Alternate key for searching through all nodes of info file.

KEY_SEARCH_1
     Key for searching through current node (or manual).

KEY_SEARCH_2
     Alternate key for searching through current node (or manual).

KEY_SEARCH_AGAIN_1
     Key for repeating the last search.

KEY_SEARCH_AGAIN_2
     Alternate key for repeating the last search.

KEY_GOTO_1
     Key for explicitly going to a node (by specifing it's name).

KEY_GOTO_2
     Alternate key for explicitly going to a node (by specifing it's name).

KEY_PREVNODE_1
     Key for going to a node marked as 'Prev' in the header. In manpage viewer this goes to the previous man section.

KEY_PREVNODE_2
     Alternate key for going to a node marked as 'Prev' in the header. In manpage viewer this goes to the previous man section.

KEY_NEXTNODE_1
     Key for going to a node marked as 'Next' in the header. In manpage viewer this goes to the next man section.

KEY_NEXTNODE_2
     Alternate key for going to a node marked as 'Next' in the header. In manpage viewer this goes to the next man section.

KEY_UP_1
     Key for scrolling text one line up.  Alternate key for scrolling text one line up.

KEY_END_1
     Key for going to the end of the node.  Alternate key for going to the end of the node.

KEY_PGDN_1
     Key for going one page down in the viewed node.

KEY_PGDN_2
     Alternate key for going one page down in the viewed node.

KEY_PGDN_AUTO_1
     Key for going to the next node when you're at the end of node (default is zero -- turned off).

KEY_PGDN_AUTO_2
     Alternate key for going to the next node when you're at the end of node (default is space, as for pgdn_2).

KEY_HOME_1
     Key for going to the beginning of the node.

KEY_HOME_2
     Alternate key for going to the beginning of the node.

KEY_PGUP_1
     Key for going one page up in the viewed node.

KEY_PGUP_2
     Alternate key for going one page up in the viewed node.

KEY_PGUP_AUTO_1
     Key for going to the `up' node, when being at the top of node. (Default value is zero -- turned off).

KEY_PGUP_AUTO_2
     Alternate key for going to the `up' node, when being at the top of node. (Default value is `-', as for pgup_2).

KEY_DOWN_1
     Key for scrolling the text down one line.

KEY_DOWN_2
     Alternate key for scrolling the text down one line.

KEY_TOP_1
     Key for going to the top (first) node.  Alternate key for going to the top (first) node.

KEY_BACK_1
     Key for going back (in the history of viewed nodes).

KEY_BACK_2
     Alternate key for going back (in the history of viewed nodes).

KEY_FOLLOWLINK_1
     Key for following a hypertext link.

KEY_FOLLOWLINK_2
     Alternate key for following a hypertext link.

KEY_REFRESH_1
     Key for refreshing the screen (hardcoded is the ^L value).

KEY_REFRESH_2
     Alternate key for refreshing the screen.

KEY_SHELLFEED_1
     Key for calling a shell command, and passing the viewed node to the stdin of that command.

KEY_SHELLFEED_2
     Alternate key for calling a shell command, and passing the viewed node to the stdin of that command.

KEY_QUIT_1
     Key for exiting the program.

KEY_QUIT_2
     Alternate key for exiting the program.

KEY_GOLINE_1
     Key for going to a specified line in file.

KEY_GOLINE_2
     Alternate key for going to a specified line in file.

KEY_PRINT_1
     Key for printing viewed node or man page.

KEY_PRINT_2
     Alternate key for printing viewed node or man page.

The special mnemonics for keys (which are defined at present) are:

KEY_BREAK

KEY_DOWN

KEY_UP

KEY_LEFT

KEY_RIGHT

KEY_DOWN

KEY_HOME

KEY_BACKSPACE

KEY_NPAGE

KEY_PPAGE

KEY_END
     [Note: this works probably ONLY with linux ncurses]

KEY_F(x)

KEY_CTRL('c')
     this assigns the key value to a ctrl+c combination.  c may be any letter you wish.

KEY_ALT('c')
     this assigns the key value to a alt+c combination.  c may be any letter you wish. If alt key won't work, you may use ESC+key combination.

'c'
     this means a printable character c. The syntax is just like in C/C++ ;).

[number]
     you can also specify key as it's code number.  It is useful e.g. when specifing control keys, and some nonstandard keys.  A numerical value of zero turns given keybinding off.

See manual page for curs_getch(3x) for description of their meaning.

Warning!  Try not to create some serious keybinding conflicts!

Options
-------

The options in the last part of the example configuration file should be fairly self-explanatory.  The variables that can be set to true or false do the same things as the commandline arguments with the same names.

MANUAL
     If this is set to true the default is to first check for a man page, instead of a texinfo file.

CUT-MAN-HEADERS
     If set to true, then pinfo tries to cut off the repeated headers throughout man pages.

CUT-EMPTY-MAN-LINES
     If set to true, then pinfo tries to cut off the repeated newlines (i.e.  it will shorten each set of consecutive newlines to one newline).

RAW-FILENAME
     If set to true, the file argument is taken to be the name of a file in the current working directory, i.e.  the directories in INFOPATH will only be searched if a file with this name is not in the working directory.

APROPOS
     If set to true, apropos is called if no info or man page is found.

DONT-HANDLE-WITHOUT-TAG-TABLE
     If set to true, pinfo will not attempt to display texinfo pages without tag tables.

HTTPVIEWER
     Set this to the program you want to use to follow http links in documents.

FTPVIEWER
     Set this to the program you want to use to follow ftp links in documents.

MAILEDITOR
     Set this to your favourite email program, and it will be started if you follow an email link in a document.

PRINTUTILITY
     Utility, which you use for printing. I.e.  lpr. If you don't use any, you may also try something like cat >/dev/lp1, or sth. ;)

MANLINKS
     This specifies the section names, which may be referenced in your man pages (i.e.  Xtoolkit man pages match the section 3Xt (see for example XtVaCreateWidget) manpage), Xlib function pages match section 3X11, etc. Such extensions may not be recognized by default, so it is a good idea to add them).

INFOPATH
     This allows you to override the default search paths for info pages. Paths should be separated by colons.

MAN-OPTIONS
     This specifies the options, which should be passed to the `man' program. (see man(1) for description of what they're like).

STDERR-REDIRECTION
     Pinfo allows you to redirect the stderr output of called programms.  For example if you don't want to see man's error messages about manual page formatting, you can use STDER-REDIRECTION"> /dev/null".  This is the default.

LONG-MANUAL-LINKS
     This is another true/false option, which decides whether your system supports long manual section names, or not.  (i.e.  "3ncurses" instead of "3").

FILTER-0xB7
     This decides, whether you want to convert 0xb7 chars to o, or not.  For example for iso-8859-2 fonts this makes man's list marks a bit nicer ;) (look for example at perl's man page, to see how those marks look like).

QUIT-CONFIRMATION
     This decides whether you want to use quit confirmation on exit, or not.

QUIT-CONFIRM-DEFAULT
     This yes/no option determines the default answer to the QUIT-CONFIRMATION dialog.  (default answer is when you press a key, that does not match the asked question).

CLEAR-SCREEN-AT-EXIT
     This true/false option determines if you want to have your screen cleared at exit, or no.

CALL-READLINE-HISTORY
     This true/false option determines if you want to have a prompt of last history entry whenever calling readline wrapper, eg. in subsequent searches.

HIGHLIGHTREGEXP
     This is an option, through which you may pass to pinfo regexps, which should be highlighted when working with document.  Warning! This may turn very slow if you use it without care!

SAFE-USER
     This option is used to pass the name of user, to which suid when pinfo is run with root privileges.

SAFE-GROUP
     This option is used to pass the name of group, to which suid when pinfo is run with root privileges.

Example config file
-------------------

     #
     # Here are some colour setting.
     # Whitespace between the entries is optional.
     #
     COL_NORMAL        =COLOR_WHITE,    COLOR_BLACK, NO_BOLD, NO_BLINK
     COL_MENUSELECTED  =COLOR_RED,      COLOR_BLACK, BOLD,    NO_BLINK
     COL_MENU          =COLOR_BLUE,     COLOR_BLACK, BOLD,    NO_BLINK
     COL_NOTESELECTED  =COLOR_RED,      COLOR_BLACK, BOLD,    NO_BLINK
     COL_NOTE          =COLOR_GREEN,    COLOR_BLACK, BOLD,    NO_BLINK
     COL_TOPLINE       =COLOR_YELLOW,   COLOR_BLUE,  BOLD,    NO_BLINK
     COL_BOTTOMLINE    =COLOR_YELLOW,   COLOR_BLUE,  BOLD,    NO_BLINK
     COL_MANUALBOLD    =COLOR_WHITE,    COLOR_BLACK, BOLD,    NO_BLINK
     COL_MANUALITALIC  =COLOR_WHITE,    COLOR_BLACK, BOLD,    NO_BLINK
     COL_URL           =COLOR_MAGENTA,  COLOR_BLACK, BOLD,    NO_BLINK
     COL_URLSELECTED   =COLOR_RED,      COLOR_BLACK, NO_BOLD, NO_BLINK
     COL_INFOHIGHLIGHT =COLOR_WHITE,    COLOR_BLACK, BOLD,    NO_BLINK

     #
     # Here are some keybindings as well...
     #
     KEY_TOTALSEARCH_1    ='s'
     KEY_TOTALSEARCH_2    ='S'
     KEY_SEARCH_1         ='/'
     KEY_SEARCH_2         ='.'
     KEY_GOTO_1           ='g'
     KEY_GOTO_2           ='m'
     KEY_HOME_1           ='h'
     KEY_HOME_2           ='H'
     KEY_PREVNODE_1       ='p'
     KEY_PREVNODE_2       ='P'
     KEY_NEXTNODE_1       ='n'
     KEY_NEXTNODE_2       ='N'
     KEY_UP_1             =KEY_UP
     KEY_UP_2             ='u'
     KEY_END_1            =KEY_END
     KEY_END_2            ='e'
     KEY_PGDN_1           =KEY_NPAGE
     KEY_PGDN_2           =' '
     KEY_PGDN_AUTO_1      =0
     KEY_PGDN_AUTO_2      =' '
     KEY_PGUP_1           =KEY_PPAGE
     KEY_PGUP_2           ='b'
     KEY_PGUP_AUTO_1      =0
     KEY_PGUP_AUTO_2      ='b'
     KEY_DOWN_1           =KEY_DOWN
     KEY_DOWN_2           ='d'
     KEY_TOP_1            =KEY_HOME
     KEY_TOP_2            ='t'
     KEY_BACK_1           =KEY_LEFT
     KEY_BACK_2           ='l'
     KEY_FOLLOWLINK_1     =KEY_RIGHT
     KEY_FOLLOWLINK_2     ='\n'
     # 12 is a code for ctrl+l
     KEY_REFRESH_1        =KEY_CTRL('l')
     KEY_REFRESH_2        ='~'
     KEY_SHELLFEED_1      ='!'
     KEY_SHELLFEED_2      ='1'
     KEY_QUIT_1           ='q'
     KEY_QUIT_2           ='Q'
     KEY_DIRPAGE_1        ='d'
     KEY_DIRPAGE_2        ='D'
     KEY_GOLINE_1         ='l'
     KEY_GOLINE_2         =0
     KEY_PRINT_1          =']'
     KEY_PRINT_2          =0
     KEY_SEARCH_AGAIN_1   ='f'
     KEY_SEARCH_AGAIN_2   =0

     #
     # Some options, explained in the man page
     #
     MANUAL=false
     CUT-MAN-HEADERS=true
     CUT-EMPTY-MAN-LINES=true
     RAW-FILENAME=false
     APROPOS=false
     DONT-HANDLE-WITHOUT-TAG-TABLE=false
     LONG-MANUAL-LINKS=false
     FILTER-0xB7=true
     QUIT-CONFIRMATION=false
     QUIT-CONFIRM-DEFAULT=no
     CLEAR-SCREEN-AT-EXIT=true
     STDERR-REDIRECTION="2> /dev/null"
     HTTPVIEWER=lynx
     FTPVIEWER=lynx
     MAILEDITOR=pine
     MANLINKS=1:8:2:3:4:5:6:7:9:n:p:o:3X11:3Xt
     INFOPATH=/usr/info:/usr/share/info:/usr/local/info
     HIGHLIGHTREGEXP=bash.*has
     SAFE-USER=nobody
     SAFE-GROUP=nobody

Environment
===========

There is a variable $INFOPATH, which can specify the paths to  be  searched for info files. It's format is similar to that of the $PATH variable. An example setting could look like:

/usr/info:/usr/somewhere/info:/not/even/in/usr/info

etc. Directories are separated by colons.

Internationalization Support
****************************

Pinfo implements general features of gnu gettext library (the thing, which you need to see national messages ;). But it is not the end. Pinfo allows you to use national info pages! You only need to put them to your info directory, into a subdirectory, which is called $LANG.

Author
******

Przemek Borys pborys@dione.ids.pl, http://zeus.polsl.gliwice.pl/~pborys/

If that E-mail address wont work (since the machine where it is being handled is a bit damaged lately), you can try pborys@zeus.polsl.gliwice.pl, or pborys@p-soft.silesia.linux.org.pl.

There was also a lot of other people, who contributed to this code. See the AUTHORS file.

Please send bug reports to the author: Przemek Borys pborys@dione.ids.pl, http://zeus.polsl.gliwice.pl/~pborys/.

The author would like to read some comments and suggestions from you, if any.

Bugs
****

Please send bug reports to the author, Author.

Copyright
*********

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of this License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with GNU Emacs; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 021111, USA.

Copyright 2000 © Przemek Borys

pborys@dione.ids.pl, http://zeus.polsl.gliwice.pl/~pborys/