Man Pages Colors – How to Enable Colors in Man Pages

colorslessmanpagertermcap

When I look at a man page in my 'console' (not an xterm) I see some coloration, but I don't get this in my xterm's (e.g. konsole) is there any way I can enable this? hopefully a fairly simple solution?

Best Answer

You need to use the termcap(5) feature. The man page on some Unices says this tool is obsolete and to use terminfo, but it's still available on others (and terminfo is more complicated).

More importantly, less uses termcap.

Setting colors for less

I do the following so that less and man (which uses less) will have color:

$ cat ~/.LESS_TERMCAP 
export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$(tput bold; tput setaf 2) # green
export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$(tput bold; tput setaf 6) # cyan
export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$(tput sgr0)
export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$(tput bold; tput setaf 3; tput setab 4) # yellow on blue
export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$(tput rmso; tput sgr0)
export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$(tput smul; tput bold; tput setaf 7) # white
export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$(tput rmul; tput sgr0)
export LESS_TERMCAP_mr=$(tput rev)
export LESS_TERMCAP_mh=$(tput dim)
export LESS_TERMCAP_ZN=$(tput ssubm)
export LESS_TERMCAP_ZV=$(tput rsubm)
export LESS_TERMCAP_ZO=$(tput ssupm)
export LESS_TERMCAP_ZW=$(tput rsupm)
export GROFF_NO_SGR=1         # For Konsole and Gnome-terminal

And then in my ~/.bashrc, I do this:

# Get color support for 'less'
export LESS="--RAW-CONTROL-CHARS"

# Use colors for less, man, etc.
[[ -f ~/.LESS_TERMCAP ]] && . ~/.LESS_TERMCAP

NOTE: See Documentation on LESS_TERMCAP_* variables? for how this works.

The final result

    ss of man page

Related Question