Quick tip on MAN
 

Not sure if this is helpful, but I certainly don't memorize the alphabet soup of switches, and sometimes the man pages have the best info for a particular task. As lab tests are time sensitive, I'm finding it helpful to spit a man page out, rather than looking at it, try to memorize switches, and continue writing a script. You can redirect the output of MAN to the terminal by using the -P switch:

localhost # man -P cat gzip

or

localhost # man -P cat partimage

That'll make scrolling back up to double check something quicker and easier.

Hi,

How does this make things easier?

After issuing man command I can go up and down a page, search, go to the end or beginning etc. All that is not possible with you solution, if you have very long man pages you might even run into the limit of lines that can be shown (scrolled back) in the terminal.

The problem with MAN's default activity is that if there are switches or other syntax, once you exit the MAN viewer, the info is gone, you can't scroll back to review while building a command. If the manage is too long for the buffer, you could use

# man PROGRAM > programmanpage.txt

Then use a text editor or some such. A second virtual terminal can do a similar feat as well.

You can always just open up a second terminal window. :)