Colors in Man Pages

You need to use the termcap(5) feature. The man page on some Unices says this tool is obsolete and to use terminfo, but it's still available on others (and terminfo is more complicated).

More importantly, less uses termcap.

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Setting colors for less

I do the following so that less and man (which uses less) will have color:

$ cat ~/.LESS_TERMCAP 
export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$(tput bold; tput setaf 2) # green
export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$(tput bold; tput setaf 6) # cyan
export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$(tput sgr0)
export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$(tput bold; tput setaf 3; tput setab 4) # yellow on blue
export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$(tput rmso; tput sgr0)
export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$(tput smul; tput bold; tput setaf 7) # white
export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$(tput rmul; tput sgr0)
export LESS_TERMCAP_mr=$(tput rev)
export LESS_TERMCAP_mh=$(tput dim)
export LESS_TERMCAP_ZN=$(tput ssubm)
export LESS_TERMCAP_ZV=$(tput rsubm)
export LESS_TERMCAP_ZO=$(tput ssupm)
export LESS_TERMCAP_ZW=$(tput rsupm)
export GROFF_NO_SGR=1         # For Konsole and Gnome-terminal

And then in my ~/.bashrc, I do this:

# Get color support for 'less'
export LESS="--RAW-CONTROL-CHARS"

# Use colors for less, man, etc.
[[ -f ~/.LESS_TERMCAP ]] && . ~/.LESS_TERMCAP

NOTE: See Documentation on LESS_TERMCAP_* variables? for how this works.

The final result

    

You can solve this issue by using a different pager, for example most. man will actually use the program specified in the PAGER environment variable. From the man(1) man page:

MANPAGER, PAGER

If $MANPAGER or $PAGER is set ($MANPAGER is used in preference), its value is used as the name of the program used to display the manual page. By default, pager -s is used.

The value may be a simple command name or a command with arguments, and may use shell quoting (backslashes, single quotes, or double quotes).

It may not use pipes to connect multiple commands; if you need that, use a wrapper script, which may take the file to display either as an argument or on standard input.

If most is installed on your system, try this, before launching man:

export PAGER=most

The default underlines hurt my eyes. This setup greatly improves my man page reading:

Add the following in your `~.bashrc':

# Have less display colours
# from: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Color_output_in_console#man
export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$'\e[1;31m'     # begin bold
export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\e[1;33m'     # begin blink
export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$'\e[01;44;37m' # begin reverse video
export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\e[01;37m'    # begin underline
export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\e[0m'        # reset bold/blink
export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$'\e[0m'        # reset reverse video
export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\e[0m'        # reset underline
export GROFF_NO_SGR=1                  # for konsole and gnome-terminal

For the win, combine with export MANPAGER='less -s -M +Gg' (source) to display your percentage into the document.