Arch Linux

axper

Member

Registered: 2013-01-25

Posts: 115

Convert GNU .info manual pages to HTML or PDF or MAN

Several packages come with gnu .info.gz manual files that reside /usr/share/info directory. I am trying to read them in a convenient format.

What I have tried so far:

• source: http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/man … utput.html
  "texi2pdf /usr/share/info/make.info.gz" produces this output:

  This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.5-1.40.14 (TeX Live 2013/Arch Linux)
   restricted \write18 enabled.
  entering extended mode
  (/usr/share/info/make.info.gz
  /usr/share/info/make.info.gz:1: Too many }'s.
  l.1 ^^_^^H^^@^^@^^@^^@^^@^^B^^C}
                                   Xr8^^V'^^ZM)!^^^$Hk^^\c)(H...
  
  ? q
  OK, entering \batchmode/usr/bin/texi2dvi: pdfetex exited with bad status, quitting.

• "texi2html /usr/share/info/make.info.gz" produces the following output:

  warning: Must specify a title with a title command or @top

  the resulting make.info.gz.html is an empty file with only the following text: "This document was generated on December 2, 2013 using texi2html 5.0."

• source: http://sourceforge.net/projects/info2html/
  this is a program consisting of 2 scripts: info2html & infocat. The program's readme links to http://info2html.sourceforge.net/. The instructions there tell me that the defaults should work. When running "./info2html &> info2html.html && firefox info2html.html &" firefox opens a page which seems to contain all the info pages that exist in my /usr/share/info. However when I click any of the program names (which are links) nothing happens. When running "./infocat &> infocat.html && firefox infocat.html &" firefox opens a page which again contains a list of software which provide texinfo manuals. When clicking any of their names, it opens the text file info2html file in text format.

• source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1300931
  The command "info make | groff > make.ps && evince make.ps" produces several warnings and a file which is near impossible to read.

Morn

Member

Registered: 2012-09-02

Posts: 886

Re: Convert GNU .info manual pages to HTML or PDF or MAN

Konqueror is probably the most convenient way to read info and man pages on Linux. If you type "info:" into its URL bar you will get a categorized HTML list of all info files on the system. And of course Konqueror can also save any page as a PDF.

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Convert GNU .info manual pages to HTML or PDF or MAN

Do you find using e.g. pinfo inconvenient?

axper

Member

Registered: 2013-01-25

Posts: 115

Re: Convert GNU .info manual pages to HTML or PDF or MAN

Do you find using e.g. pinfo inconvenient?

Hmm, vim keybindings are a plus, however I can't use the mouse or scroll with it. Still looks good though - I'll investigate it's manual.

Konqueror is probably the most convenient way to read info and man pages on Linux. If you type "info:" into its URL bar you will get a categorized HTML list of all info files on the system. And of course Konqueror can also save any page as a PDF.

That's much better! I'll use it more and see if I can make it scroll with middle click and disable smooth scrolling etc, but still it's a good option as well.

More suggestions are welcome & thanks for replies!

lilydjwg

Member

Registered: 2010-06-20

Posts: 73

Re: Convert GNU .info manual pages to HTML or PDF or MAN

I've found how to use info2html. This is a CGI script that is easy to setup with Apache httpd. Put all the info2html and info2html.conf to the cgi directory and info2html.css to the web server root, then point your browser to the URL.

Allan

Pacman

From: Brisbane, AU

Registered: 2007-06-09

Posts: 11,673

Website

Re: Convert GNU .info manual pages to HTML or PDF or MAN

The texi2... programs both need the .texi files used to generate the info pages.  You would need to download the source to retrieve that.

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