Howto add colors support for less

This howto explain how to add synthaxic coloration support for less with lessfilter and enscript.

1 - Install enscript

You can :

• Install enscript from sources : http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/enscript/enscript-1.6.1.tar.gz
• Install enscript package : "apt-get install enscript" for debian

2 - Install extra languages support

You can add support for extra languages (ruby, eiffel, ...). For this, you need to copy the file language.st in your ~/.enscript directory. Here is language files that are not included with enscript

• Eiffel programming language
• Ruby programming language

3 - Create a .lessfilter file

You can copy this file to ~/.lessfilter. Don't forget to add execution right to this file (this is a shell script).

4 - export some variables

you can add them in your .bashrc, .zshrc, ...

export LESS='--RAW-CONTROL-CHARS --tabs=8 -r'
export LESSOPEN='| /usr/bin/lesspipe %s'
export LESSCLOSE='/usr/bin/lesspipe %s %s'

If you are using tcsh or an other c-shell, the correct synthax is :

setenv LESS '--RAW-CONTROL-CHARS --tabs=8 -r'
setenv LESSOPEN '| /usr/bin/lesspipe %s'
setenv LESSCLOSE '/usr/bin/lesspipe %s %s'

Have fun.