MWX/ManPage

2022-04-16 Changes to the man command seem to have broken this extension, and I haven't had time to fix it.

About

Special:ManPage is a simple extension for MediaWiki which allows any manpage (of those installed on the web site's server) to be displayed within the wiki as a Special page, which is often more readable than the standard terminal-based display. It makes use of the man command's "--html" option which displays output in HTML instead of fixed-pitch plaintext. The page to display is requested within the URL.

Requires: groff (see #Troubleshooting, below)

Manpage contents can also be transcluded, but this may not be particularly useful until some features are added for extracting partial content of manpages rather than returning the entire thing.

Links

• Git repository

Troubleshooting

If you get a blank page (no errors but no manpage either), make sure groff is installed. The man command uses groff for HTML formatting.

Future

Planned features:

• option to return just a summary
• search manpages by topic or content
• list available manpages
• support for crosslinks to other manpages (not sure this is possible)
• texinfo support