Display "man" pages as PDFs on macOS, with nice filenames and caching.

man2pdf.sh

#!/bin/sh

man2pdf() {
	##
	## Created by Pico Mitchell (of Random Applications) on 11/16/22
	##
	## https://gist.github.com/PicoMitchell/619c12fd6a53ae6ec657514915d4edf9
	##
	## MIT License
	##
	## Copyright (c) 2022 Pico Mitchell (Random Applications)
	##
	## Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),
	## to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
	## and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
	##
	## The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
	##
	## THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
	## FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
	## WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
	##

	man_pdf_folder_base_path="/private/tmp/man PDFs" # Set this path to wherever you want the man page PDFs to be saved to (it doesn't have to be a temporary location).

	this_man_path="$(/usr/bin/man -w "$@" 2> /dev/null)"

	if [ -f "${this_man_path}" ]; then
		man_pdf_folder_os_path="${man_pdf_folder_base_path}/$(/usr/bin/sw_vers -productVersion) ($(/usr/bin/sw_vers -buildVersion))"
		# Save every man page PDF into a sub-folder for the current OS version (and build) since man pages can be updated between
		# OS versions, and don't want to retrieve an old cached version from a preivous OS (when not saving to a temporary location).

		if [ ! -d "${man_pdf_folder_os_path}" ]; then
			if [ -d "${man_pdf_folder_base_path}" ]; then
				# If the man PDFs base path exists, but not the current OS sub-folder, that likely means that there has been an OS update since the last run,
				# so clear the cache of the old man PDFs from the previous OS version by deleting the base path which will be re-created when the new latest OS sub-folder is created below.

				/bin/rm -rf "${man_pdf_folder_base_path}"
			fi

			/bin/mkdir -p "${man_pdf_folder_os_path}"
		fi

		this_man_filename="${this_man_path##*/}"
		this_man_section="${this_man_filename#*.}"
		this_man_filename="${this_man_filename%.*}"
		if [ "${this_man_section}" != '1' ]; then
			this_man_filename="${this_man_filename} (${this_man_section})"
		fi

		this_man_pdf_path="${man_pdf_folder_os_path}/man ${this_man_filename}.pdf"

		if [ ! -f "${this_man_pdf_path}" ]; then
			/usr/bin/mandoc -T pdf "${this_man_path}" > "${this_man_pdf_path}"
		fi

		/usr/bin/open "${this_man_pdf_path}"
	else
		/usr/bin/man "$@" # If the man page didn't exist, run the actual "man" command with the passed arguments to show any relevant output or error.
	fi
}