apt manpage of Ubuntu recently, which, for some reason, uses blue text in one place:
Ah, so apparently they don’t like writing manpages anymore and instead use XML:
https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/apt/-/blob/main/doc/apt.8.xml
And then they use XSLT on top and what not:
https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/apt/-/blob/main/doc/manpage-style.xsl.cmake.in
It’s not even explicitly blue:
https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/apt/-/blob/main/doc/apt.ent?ref_type=heads#L17
Abstractions upon abstractions upon abstractions.
@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Oh no. 😨 Backups! We need more backups!
You can explicitly use colors in manpages. I saw this in the apt manpage of Ubuntu recently, which, for some reason, uses blue text in one place:
https://movq.de/v/de5ab72016/s.png
Makes little sense to me. I’m glad that most manpages don’t do this. I wouldn’t want unicorn vomit all over the place.
Using colors can be done using the low level commands \m and \M:
.TH foo_program 3
\m[blue]I'm blue\m[], da ba dee.
\m[red]\M[yellow]I'm red on yellow.\m[]\M[]
This is quite horrible.
@jost@jost.sdfeu.org Yeah replying is pretty easy if you see the first reply. Just preserve the so-called “Subject” 🤣
@kiwu@twtxt.net awww you got this kiwu <3
@jost@jost.sdfeu.org welcome!
@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz the culprit was, as always, a typo’d dd command
@jost@jost.sdfeu.org Hey 👋
@kiwu@twtxt.net Congrats 🥳
@movq@www.uninformativ.de 🤣 LMAO! this one caught me off guard, I wasn’t expecting THIS
@eldersnake@we.loveprivacy.club Yeah, it’s really the last thing we need. I’d love to see X11 getting more attention – but not like this …
Distrobox is pretty handy and kind of amazed I haven’t played with it before now. I wanted to quickly try out Proton’s Authenticator they just released, but they only had binaries for Ubuntu and Fedora (naturally), but I’m on Void Linux on this laptop.
Installed the latest basic Fedora image with Distrobox, used dnf to install the downloaded rpm file within it, and presto, running the app within Void like I’d just downloaded it though the normal repos.
In case you were blissfully unaware: https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/unix/XLibreIsExplicitlyPolitical
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org you will have to agree, though, that Yarn has contributed to make it possible to mass adopt (with its many glitches, bugs, and all) because, still, the web is king.
@movq@www.uninformativ.de yeah, I think something glitched at my end for a brief moment. It does it just fine.
you know i can never get into boy groups but i have liked EXO’s obsession since it came out. that “i want you” sample is just too good man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxmP4b2a0uY
@bender@twtxt.net This should be a core feature, no configuration required. 🤔
How do you get your man pages to hyphenate? Mine doesn’t do it.

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz On the one hand, all these programs have a very long history and the technology behind manpages is actually very powerful – you can use it to write books:
https://www.troff.org/pubs.html
I have two books from that list, for example “The UNIX programming environment”:
https://movq.de/v/c3dab75c97/upe.jpg
It’s a bit older, of course, but it looks and feels like a normal book, and it uses the same tech as manpages – which I think is really cool. 😎
It’s comparable to LaTeX (just harder/different to use) but much faster than LaTeX. You can also do stuff like render manpages as a PDF (man -Tpdf cp >cp.pdf) or as an HTML file (man -Thtml cp >cp.html). I think I once made slides for a talk this way.
On the other hand, traditional manpages (i.e., ones that are not written in mandoc) do not use semantic markup. They literally say, “this text is bold, that text over here is italics”, and so on.
So when you run man foo, it has no other choice but to show it in black, white, bold, underline – showing it in color would be wrong, because that’s not what the source code of that manpage says.
Colorizing them is a hack, to be honest. You’re not meant to do this. (The devs actually broke this by accident recently. They themselves aren’t really aware that people use colors.)
If mandoc and semantic markup was more commonly used, I think it would be easier to convince the devs to add proper customizable colors.
@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Any time 😅
@prologic@twtxt.net THANK YOU SO MUCH OMG!!!
@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Here’s the full config I use.
having fun with omg.lol lately
@prologic@twtxt.net haha yeah for the youtube rules i just copied the first JSON block in your screenshot (i typed it out) and it miraculously worked! yayyy
@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Cool! 😎 Yeah I’ll add that soon™
@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Oh sweet! I was gonna say, setting up those rules is a bit “complicated” 🤣 But I’m glad you worked it out! 👌
ok i really like XLOV. 1&Only is a great song. so vibe-y and sensual. and they released it in pride month too they Get It https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBZgirj_C2Y
YAYYY TY @prologic@twtxt.net NOW I HAVE IMAGE & YOUTUBE EMBEDS ON MY YARN POD 🎉🎉🎉
@prologic@twtxt.net AHA the .* entry did the trick! i originally had these rules in there, they were added by default except for the youtube rules:
imgur\.com
giphy\.com
imgs\.xkcd\.com
reactiongifs\.com
githubusercontent\.com
youtube\.com
yt.\be
also oooh the missing feature sounds very handy!
Hello @jassim@twtxt.net 👋
@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Ahh what do you mean by images don’t embed? They definitely should! By default however all domains are blocked, so you might want to either allow some domains or just put in a .* entry to allow all/any domsins. Screenshot attached 
psst i’ll be at my local event for HTML day!!! i’m very excited but very nervous, i don’t even know what i’ll be working on! but i’ll figure it out…
@movq@www.uninformativ.de WHATTTTT WHY DO THEY MAKE THIS SO HARD
(Just for fun, SuSE Linux 6.4 from ~25 years ago: https://movq.de/v/dc62d0256c/s.png )
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org @kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Colorized manpages have been a thing for a very long time:
https://movq.de/v/81219d7f7a/s.png
Problem is, hardly anybody knows this, because you configure this by … drumroll … overwriting TERMCAP entries of less in your ~/.bashrc:
export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\e[38;5;3m' # Bold
export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\e[0m' # End Bold
export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\e[4;38;5;6m' # Underline
export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\e[0m' # End Underline
export GROFF_NO_SGR=1 # Needed since groff 1.23
how do i serve cunt like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prR9miCSDlg
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org we NEED syntax highlighting in our man pages!!!! (FWIW i think bat can do that lol)
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org BLUE DA BA DI BA DI DAAAA hahah iconic!!! ladida is suchhh a good song i was so obsessed with it when it came out in 2020
/short/ if it's of this useless kind. Never thought that they ever actually will improve their Atom feeds. Thank you, much appreciated!
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org perfectly fine, don’t worry about it!!! this looks really cool TY for sharing it :D
/short/ if it's of this useless kind. Never thought that they ever actually will improve their Atom feeds. Thank you, much appreciated!
@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz @movq@www.uninformativ.de Sorry, I neither finished it nor in time. :-( That’s as good as it’s gonna get for the moment: https://git.isobeef.org/lyse/gelbariab/-/tree/master/rss-proxys?ref_type=heads
The README should hopefully provide a crude introduction. The example configuration file is documented fairly well, I believe (but maybe not). You probably still have to consult and maybe also modify the source code to fit your needs.
Let me know if you run into issues, have questions, wishes etc.
Hahaha, I first thought of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA52uNzx7Y4
when I read @kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz’s “lyrics”. ;-)
Doesn’t sound bad, I like it. The synth reminded me of some song by Beast in Black.
@movq@www.uninformativ.de @kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz I also wondered for a very long time why nobody improved the man experience in the terminal. I’d love to see links and more colors.
i signed up for omg.lol and i’m really liking it. such a cozy and fun little community with a suite of fun web things. i wish the financial barrier to entry was a bit lower though (maybe like $5 for a few months on it or something) just so i could recommend it to my broke friends more, but i totally get why it’s priced the way it is (solo dev!!!)
@movq@www.uninformativ.de it’s so scary save urself