Linux is my favorite operating system, especially gentoo distro. The command line is an awesome tool, but sometimes I’m missing the colors on black&white terminal. Yes, you can simply colorize the command ls or grep just adding the line
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
but how about the man pages ?
Man pages by default use less for displaying. So let’s go configure LESS to export bold and underline values of termcap:
export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$'\E[01;31m' # begin blinking export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\E[01;38;5;74m' # begin bold export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$'\E[38;5;246m' # begin standout-mode - info box export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\E[04;38;5;146m' # begin underline export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\E[0m' # end mode export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$'\E[0m' # end standout-mode export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\E[0m' # end underline
Add the shell variables “LESS_TERMCAP_*” to gentoo configuration defined in /etc/env.d/70less or ~/.bashrc in general to work.
The ANSI escape sequence ’38;5;74m’ define xterm-256 foreground color with last number as a color index 0..255. Customize the colors as you like according to ANSI escape sequence.
Check if ANSI “color” escape sequences is enabled with parameter “-R” to LESS command:
$ env | grep LESS= LESS=-R -M --shift 5
Check if man pages are rendered with color output. If not modify /etc/man.conf' and add switch ‘-c’ to NROFF configuration:
NROFF /usr/bin/nroff -mandoc -c
Finally, you now see colored 'man ls' output:
NAME
ls - list directory contents
SYNOPSIS
ls [ OPTION ]... [ FILE ]...
DESCRIPTION
List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default). Sort entries alphabetically if none of -cftuvSUX nor --sort is specified.
Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
-a, --all
do not ignore entries starting with .
-A, --almost-all
do not list implied . and ..
--author
with -l, print the author of each file
-b, --escape