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tldr-node-client

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A Node.js based command-line client for tldr.

tldr screenshot

tldr-node-client's output for the tar page, using a custom color theme

Installing

npm install -g tldr

Usage

To see tldr pages:

The client caches a copy of all pages locally, in ~/.tldr. There are more commands to control the local cache:

As a contributor, you might also need the following commands:

Tldr pages defaults to showing pages in the current language of the operating system, or English if that's not available. To view tldr pages for a different language, set an environment variable LANG containing a valid POSIX locale (such as zh, pt_BR, or fr) and then run the above commands as usual. In most *nix systems, this variable will already be set.

It is suggested that the LANG environment variable be set system-wide if this isn't already the case. Users without sudo access can set it locally in their ~/.profile.

For the list of available translations, please refer to the main tldr repo.

Configuration

You can configure the tldr client by adding a .tldrrc file in your HOME directory. You can copy the contents of the config.json file from the repo to get the basic structure to start with, and modify it to suit your needs.

The default color theme is the one named "simple". You can change the theme by assigning a different value to the "theme" variable -- either to one of the pre-configured themes, or to a new theme that you have previously created in the "themes" section. Note that the colors and text effects you can choose are limited. Refer to the chalk documentation for all options.

{
  "themes": {
    "ocean": {
      "commandName": "bold, cyan",
      "mainDescription": "",
      "exampleDescription": "green",
      "exampleCode": "cyan",
      "exampleToken": "dim"
    },
    "myOwnCoolTheme": {
      "commandName": "bold, red",
      "mainDescription": "underline",
      "exampleDescription": "yellow",
      "exampleCode": "underline, green",
      "exampleToken": ""
    }
  },
  "theme": "ocean"
}

If you regularly need pages for a different platform (e.g. Linux), you can put it in the config file:

{
  "platform": "linux"
}

The default platform value can be overwritten with command-line option:

tldr du --platform=<osx>

As a contributor, you can also point to your own fork containing the tldr.zip file. The file is just a zipped version of the entire tldr repo:

{
  "repository": "http://myrepo/assets/tldr.zip"
}

By default, a cache update is performed anytime a page is not found for a command. To prevent this behavior, you can set the configuration variable skipUpdateWhenPageNotFound to true (defaults to false):

{
  "skipUpdateWhenPageNotFound": true
}

Command-line Autocompletion

We currently support command-line autocompletion for zsh and bash.
Pull requests for other shells are most welcome!

To enable autocompletion for the tldr command, run:

zsh

It's easiest for oh-my-zsh users, so let's start with that.

mkdir -p $ZSH_CUSTOM/plugins/tldr
ln -s bin/completion/zsh/_tldr $ZSH_CUSTOM/plugins/tldr/_tldr

Then add tldr to your oh-my-zsh plugins, usually defined in ~/.zshrc, resulting in something looking like this:

plugins=(git tmux tldr)

Fret not regular zsh user! You can also do this:

tldr completion zsh
source ~/.zshrc

bash

tldr completion bash
source ~/.bashrc

This command will generate the appropriate completion script and append it to your shell's configuration file (.zshrc or .bashrc).

If you encounter any issues or need more information about the autocompletion setup, please refer to the completion.js file in the repository.

FAQ

Installation Issues

Error: EACCES: permission denied, access '/usr/local/lib/node_modules/tldr'

Then most probably your npm's default installation directory has improper permissions. You can resolve it by clicking here

as root ->
gyp WARN EACCES attempting to reinstall using temporary dev dir "/usr/local/lib/node_modules/tldr/node_modules/webworker-threads/.node-gyp"
gyp WARN EACCES user "root" does not have permission to access the dev dir "/usr/local/lib/node_modules/tldr/node_modules/webworker-threads/.node-gyp/8.9.1"

You need to add the option --unsafe-perm to your command. This is because when npm goes to the postinstall step, it downgrades the permission levels to "nobody". Probably you should fix your installation directory permissions and install as a non-root user in the first place.

/usr/local/lib/node_modules/tldr/node_modules/natural/lib/natural/classifiers/classifier.js:32
    if (e.code !== 'MODULE_NOT_FOUND') throw e;

Most probably you need to reinstall node-gyp and webworker-threads. Try this -

sudo -H npm uninstall -g tldr
sudo -H npm uninstall -g webworker-threads
npm install -g node-gyp
npm install -g webworker-threads
npm install -g tldr

For further context, take a look at this issue

Colors under Cygwin

Colors can't be shown under Mintty or PuTTY, because the dependency colors.js has a bug. Please show support to this pull request, so it can be merged.

Meanwhile, you can do one of the following to fix this issue:

tldr_path="$(which tldr)"
function tldr() {
  eval "$tldr_path" $@ "--color"
}

Contributing

Contribution are most welcome! Have a look over here for a few rough guidelines.