man2text

man2text is a Python library and CLI tool that converts all system man pages into clean, plain text files.
This makes it easy to index, vectorize, or otherwise process Unix documentation.

[!NOTE]
This is the very first version of man2text. Any contributions are appreciated!

Features

• Converts all available English manpages (/usr/share/man/man*) into .txt.
• Uses the standard man <cmd> | col -bx pipeline for accurate rendering.
• Optional multiprocessing for faster conversion on large systems.
• Provides both a CLI command and a Python API.

Installation

Clone and install locally in editable mode:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/man2text.git
cd man2text
pip install -e .

Or using pip:

pip install man2text

Usage

CLI

Convert all manpages to text and save them in ./man-txt:

man2text --output ./man-txt

Options:

• --output DIR → output directory (default: ./man-txt)
• --processes N → number of processes to use (default: auto)

Python API

from man2text.core import convert_all

# Convert all manpages to ./txt-pages with 4 processes
convert_all(output_dir="./txt-pages", processes=4)

Example Output

For example, the ls manpage will produce ls.txt containing the plain text version of the manual page.