NWE Help: Utilities: Man Pages

NWE Home :: Help :: Utilities

Most Unix systems include a simple kind of technical documentation called "man pages." The man page viewer, also called the manual browser or Xman, is a small utility program which allows you to view this documentation. While useful for technical work, most NWE students won't use the man page viewer in day-to-day computing -- the help databases are more than adequate, and more customized to NWE students' needs.

To launch the man page viewer, click on the NWE menu, select Utilities, then select Man page viewer. After a short delay, the following window will come up:

Man page viewer startup screen

The man page viewer is a very simple program -- there are only three things you can do with it.

Help

Get help using the man page viewer.

Quit

Quit the man page viewer

Manual page

Start a new man page viewer window.

If you select the last of these options a new window which contains the default man page will be displayed:

Man page viewer browse window

There are two menus available from this menu -- the "Options" menu and the "Sections" menu. The Sections menu displays a number of pre-set groups of man pages.

You can use the Sections menu to pick a list of man pages. To select a page from any list, double-click on its name. The page will be displayed.

The Options menu has more useful functions in it. Here is each one with a short description of its function:

If you don't like the way this program works, but still want access to man pages, try typing man programname from a shell prompt to see a man page in action.