Man page for ffmpeg?

stf92 · 07-13-2017, 10:01 AM

Hi: There is on the Internet a man page, but it is HTML file, directly visible through there page. Can there be an ASCII man page?

business_kid · 07-13-2017, 10:06 AM

Man pages are a funny format. Slackware provides one. Don't know about your distro, because you didn't mention what it is.

Also, ffmpeg --help is fairly good.

TB0ne · 07-13-2017, 10:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stf92

Hi: There is on the Internet a man page, but it is HTML file, directly visible through there page. Can there be an ASCII man page?

Don't know what to tell you; I can type "man ffmpeg" and I get a man page on openSUSE.

rtmistler · 07-13-2017, 12:54 PM

You can pipe the output of the --help or the man page to a file and view the file, and you can also view the HTML version in a browser and Save As a text file and then read the text file.

stf92 · 07-13-2017, 04:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid

Man pages are a funny format. Slackware provides one. Don't know about your distro, because you didn't mention what it is.

Also, ffmpeg --help is fairly good.

The distro is Slackware 14.1, but the man page format is universal in Linux. Anyway, I suppose I can read the HTML version, though I should have to start X.

justmy2cents · 07-13-2017, 04:49 PM

Not sure if this will help you but you can man manpage | col -b -x > somefile (this will save the manpage to somefile; the col -b -x fixes formatting issues)

stf92 · 07-13-2017, 05:58 PM

Thanks, someone from the Slackware subforum, some years ago gave me a little script that converted HTML to plain ASCII text but I don't have it here this moment. And it did very decently well.

frankbell · 07-13-2017, 08:42 PM

This website led me to this Wikipedia article that says man pages are written in a "typesetting" format called groff, based on a Unix format called troff.

See man groff and man troff for more.

If you have ffmpeg installed, you should also have a man page for ffmpeg.

justmy2cents · 07-13-2017, 10:57 PM

The poppler-utils package has a html to text converter as one of it's dependencies, I think it was called htmltotext.

Laserbeak · 07-14-2017, 06:18 AM

If you installed it from the source, it should have installed the man pages, you may just have to add them to your $MANPATH variable in your .bash_profile or .bashrc or whatever is the appropriate file.

stf92 · 07-19-2017, 09:23 AM

Thanks a lot, Laserbeak. By the way, I have this in /etc/profile:

Code:

# Set the values for some environment variables:
export MINICOM="-c on"
export MANPATH=/usr/local/man:/usr/man
export HOSTNAME="`cat /etc/HOSTNAME`"
export LESSOPEN="|lesspipe.sh %s"
export LESS="-M -i -z21 -S"
export VISUAL=vim

But somewhere after the system adds ':/usr/share/texmf/man'. Where can that be? I'd prefer to add ffmpeg man path there.

Laserbeak · 07-19-2017, 11:17 AM

If you want to add it there, then change:

Code:

export MANPATH=/usr/local/man:/usr/man

to

Code:

export MANPATH=/usr/local/man:/usr/man:/usr/share/texmf/man

If that's the correct path to the new man directory.

dugan · 07-19-2017, 01:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stf92

The distro is Slackware 14.1, but the man page format is universal in Linux. Anyway, I suppose I can read the HTML version, though I should have to start X.

Dude, use links. Slackware includes it in a stock install. It's a lifesaver when you need to access text-based resources without using X.

Laserbeak · 07-19-2017, 03:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dugan

Dude, use links. Slackware includes it in a stock install. It's a lifesaver when you need to access text-based resources without using X.

I think you mean lynx.

dugan · 07-19-2017, 03:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Laserbeak

I think you mean lynx.

Definitely not.

I meant links

http://ftp.oregonstate.edu/pub/slack....14-i586-2.txt

Not Lynx

http://ftp.oregonstate.edu/pub/slack...l.2-i586-3.txt

Although Lynx is indeed available and an option if you prefer it for some reason.

Links had better support for the latest HTML standards last time I checked.