Anrxcs Manual Prompt

From awesome

[edit] Description

I use this run prompt to read manual pages all the time. It has fast completion and is often faster to access a page then switching tags or focus to your 'reader'. I put examples for a terminal emulator, KDE help center and GNU Emacs (which runs as a server or daemon (in version 23)). This version searches through your whole MANPATH.

[edit] Keybinding and function code

-- Prompt menus
-- ...
-- ...
-- ...
awful.key({ modkey }, "F4", function ()
    awful.prompt.run({ prompt = "Manual: " }, mypromptbox[mouse.screen].widget,
    --  Use GNU Emacs for manual page display
    --  function (page) awful.util.spawn("emacsclient --eval '(manual-entry \"'" .. page .. "'\")'", false) end,
    --  Use the KDE Help Center for manual page display
    --  function (page) awful.util.spawn("khelpcenter man:" .. page, false) end,
    --  Use the terminal emulator for manual page display
        function (page) awful.util.spawn("urxvt -e man " .. page, false) end,
        function(cmd, cur_pos, ncomp)
            local pages = {}
            local m = 'IFS=: && find $(manpath||echo "$MANPATH") -type f -printf "%f\n"| cut -d. -f1'
            local c, err = io.popen(m)
            if c then while true do
                local manpage = c:read("*line")
                if not manpage then break end
                if manpage:find("^" .. cmd:sub(1, cur_pos)) then
                    table.insert(pages, manpage)
                end
              end
              c:close()
            else io.stderr:write(err) end
            if #cmd == 0 then return cmd, cur_pos end
            if #pages == 0 then return end
            while ncomp > #pages do ncomp = ncomp - #pages end
            return pages[ncomp], cur_pos
        end)
end),