DocTer

A cure-all script for finding and reading online documentation from the terminal

Introduction

The Problem

If you work primarily in the terminal, sometimes the man pages aren't enough. Looking for documentation in a GUI browser breaks your flow. On the other hand, terminal-based browsers have clunky interfaces for navigating between pages and finding what you are looking for. Moreover, terminal-based browsers don't always format pages too well.

The Solution

DocTer is a simple script to quickly search for online documentation from the terminal and load the page in a suitable TUI or GUI browser of your choice. The pain of navigation is gone - the all that's left is to scroll the page.

DocTer's configuration allows you filter your search to specific sites, so you're probably only a few keystrokes away from the exact page you want. Moreover, you can configure each site to open in the most suitable browser.

Benefits:

Configurable (using TOML),
flexible, and
lightweight; one script with no dependencies.

Requirements

Python 3.11+
A TUI web browser such as w3m

Installation

It's a self-contained Python script. I recommend just downloading it, running chmod +x docter.py and adding it to your $PATH.

Configuration and key concepts

You must create a config file. By default it should be in ~/.config/ and be called docter.toml, but feel free to change this in the script.

DocTer has two key concepts.

Sources: Sources are websites that you find useful for documentation certain topics.
Keywords: The first argument provided to docter is called a keyword. Keywords serve two roles. They map to a collection of sources. Also, they can be expanded into multiple search terms.

Minimal Example

Let's look at a minimal configuration and an example search.

defaultbrowser = "w3m"

[sources]
[sources.pythondocs]
urlpattern = "docs.python.org"
browser = "elinks"

[sources.pypi]
urlpattern = "pypi.org"
browser = "elinks"

[sources.cheat]
urlpattern = "cheat.sh/"

[sources.readthedocs]
urlpattern = "readthedocs.io"


[keywords]
[keywords.python]
sources = [ "pythondocs", "readthedocs", "pypi" ]
terms = "python doc"

The sources listed in the [keywords.python] table should correspond to one of the sources in the [sources] table. We now run

$ docter python requests

First, as python is a keyword listed in the [keywords] table, it expands to search for the terms python doc requests. We then are asked

Did you want https://requests.readthedocs.io/? (browser: w3m) Y/m/n/q:

This is because readthedocs is listed as a source for Python documentation. Results from the search that do not include docs.python.org, pypi.org, or readthedocs.io are not offered - so anything from cheat.sh will not be included either.

The options "Y/m/n/q" are for yes (open the page and end the search), maybe (open the page but offer the next result once done), no (move on to the next result) and quit.

Example 2

There are lots of handy cheatsheats at learnxinyminutes.com. The TUI browser links2 formats the pages from that site particularly nicely. So my configuration file might include the following:

defaultbrowser = "w3m"

[sources]
[sources.xinymins]
urlpattern = "learnxinyminutes.com/"
browser = "links2"


[keywords]
[keywords.xy]
sources = [ "xinymins" ]
terms = "learn x in y minutes"

Now

$ docter xy tmux

searches for learn x in y minutes tmux, and offers

Did you want https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/tmux/? (browser: links2) Y/m/n/q:

In other words, the default browser is overridden because the source xinymins has a browser set.

Configuration

It is recommended to copy the minimal example configuration and replace it with your own settings.

Global settings

The following global settings should be set at the beginning of your configuration file

defaultbrowser = "w3m" # required
defaultgui = "firefox" # optional but recommended
always_lucky = false # optional but recommended

The defaultbrowser and defaultgui values should be commands to launch that browser from the shell. If always_lucky is set, DocTer will automatically open the first matching result in the preferred browser without asking for confirmation.

Sources

A source has a name, a pattern to match in the URL, and optionally a preferred browser.

[sources.<NAME>]
urlpattern = "<pattern contained in URL for this source>"
browser = "<command to launch a web browser>"

Keywords

A keyword has associated to it an array of sources, and a string of search terms that the keyword will expand to. All fields are required.

[keywords.<KEYWORD>]
sources = ["<SOURCE1>", "<SOURCE2>"]
terms = "<search string here>"

More usage notes

If no keyword is given

If the first argument is not a keyword, it is converted a search term. DocTer will just search for the terms provided and will offer results from any website in the default browser.

Optional arguments

-b can be used to override the preferred browser, for example docter -b lynx python date time will open Python's datetime documentation in the lynx browser.
-g will replace the default browser (which should usually be a TUI browser) with the defaultgui browser.
-l for "lucky" mode. Open the first matching result without asking confirmation.

s-cassidy/docter