To get colors to Less in Ubuntu's Zsh

Question

How can you get similar highlightings to Zsh's Less than Bash's Less in Ubuntu?

I switched from OS X to Ubuntu. My Less do not work as expected in Zsh.

Manuals in my Less are green and black with or without the following code.

 # comment these out in Ubuntu
 export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$'\E[01;31m'         # begin blinking
 export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\E[0m'        # end mode

 export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$'\E[0m'        # end standout-mode
 export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$'\E[38;5;246m' # begin standout-mode - info box
 export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\E[0m'        # end underline

 export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\E[04;33;146m'    # begin underline is now yellow
 #                             |  |  |
 #                             |  |----------------- yellow
 #                             |-------------------- underline

 # to have the indication of cursor's location and line numbers, and R
 export LESS="-mNR"
 #               |--------- only ASCII color

The code makes manuals readable in OS X, but it does not work for Ubuntu in Zsh.

Ubuntu has excellent highlightings in Bash's Less. My manuals have the colors yellow, green and black in Bash without my code. Both Zsh and Bash use the same Less at /usr/bin/less. This suggests me that Ubuntu's Bash has some dot-files which configure it somewhere.

Where are highlightings for Ubuntu's Less in Bash?

Beitz

@Luboš Turek so finally I created the less-unix, so if you are going to untag Linux's less, please do consider adding this one in its place. – Grumous

Answer 1

This works for me in zsh on archlinux:

$ mkdir ~/.terminfo/ && cd ~/.terminfo
Now get the terminfo description:
$ wget http://nion.modprobe.de/mostlike.txt
Now compile it using tic (the terminfo entry-description compiler)
$ tic mostlike.txt
(you may want to delete the mostlike.txt file after compiling)

mostlike.txt is this

#   Reconstructed via infocmp from file: /usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm-pcolor
mostlike|manpages with color looking like most, 
    am, hs, km, mir, msgr, xenl, 
    cols#80, it#8, lines#24, wsl#40, 
    acsc=``aaffggiijjkkllmmnnooppqqrrssttuuvvwwxxyyzz{{||}}~~, 
    bel=^G, bold=\E[1m\E[31m, clear=\E[H\E[2J, cr=^M, 
    csr=\E[%i%p1%d;%p2%dr, cub=\E[%p1%dD, cub1=^H, 
    cud=\E[%p1%dB, cud1=^J, cuf=\E[%p1%dC, cuf1=\E[C, 
    cup=\E[%i%p1%d;%p2%dH, cuu=\E[%p1%dA, cuu1=\E[A, 
    dch=\E[%p1%dP, dch1=\E[P, dl=\E[%p1%dM, dl1=\E[M, 
    dsl=\E]0;\007, ed=\E[J, el=\E[K, enacs=\E)0, fsl=^G, 
    home=\E[H, ht=^I, hts=\EH, il=\E[%p1%dL, il1=\E[L, ind=^J, 
    is2=\E7\E[r\E[m\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l\E8\E>, kbs=^H, 
    kcub1=\EOD, kcud1=\EOB, kcuf1=\EOC, kcuu1=\EOA, 
    kdch1=\E[3~, kf1=\E[11~, kf10=\E[21~, kf11=\E[23~, 
    kf12=\E[24~, kf13=\E[25~, kf14=\E[26~, kf15=\E[28~, 
    kf16=\E[29~, kf17=\E[31~, kf18=\E[32~, kf19=\E[33~, 
    kf2=\E[12~, kf20=\E[34~, kf3=\E[13~, kf4=\E[14~, 
    kf5=\E[15~, kf6=\E[17~, kf7=\E[18~, kf8=\E[19~, kf9=\E[20~, 
    kfnd=\E[1~, kich1=\E[2~, kmous=\E[M, knp=\E[6~, kpp=\E[5~, 
    kslt=\E[4~, rc=\E8, rev=\E[7m\E[34m, ri=\EM, rmacs=^O, 
    rmcup=\E[2J\E[?47l\E8, rmir=\E[4l, rmkx=\E[?1l\E>, 
    rmso=\E[m, rmul=\E[m, 
    rs2=\E7\E[r\E8\E[m\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l\E[4l\E>, sc=\E7, 
    sgr0=\E[m, smacs=^N, smcup=\E7\E[?47h, smir=\E[4h, 
    smkx=\E[?1h\E=, smso=\E[1;30m\E[47m, smul=\E[32m, 
    tbc=\E[3g, tsl=\E]0;, u6=\E[%i%d;%dR, u7=\E[6n, 
    u8=\E[?1;2c, u9=\E[c, 

And then just define an alias in the rc file of your favorite shell:

alias man="TERMINFO=~/.terminfo/ LESS=C TERM=mostlike PAGER=less man"

Proconsul

Thanks for the question - I did not know about this, but I always secretly wanted it.. – Proconsul

I added the contents of the link here because link-only answer is not appropriate. – Gibe

Answer 2

My default shell is bash so take this with a grain of salt. Start with /etc/profile and see how it sources bash-specific files. You need to re-create that logic for zsh. Maybe the zsh-lovers package can help, at least its title of tips, tricks and examples for the zsh is suggestive.

Communion