> Embedding a full URL in man pages sources to an inherently relocatable page hierarchy is a bad idea.
I'm sorry, what. man://1/grep man://grep/1 man:grep(1) Syntactic bikeshedding notwithstanding, I fail to see why using the ` *scheme*:*path*` syntax could be construed as a bad idea. (Unless, of course, you were referring to `file://` or `http://` URIs). On Sun, 16 Aug 2020, 11:26 am Russ Cox, <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 7:27 AM G. Branden Robinson > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Plan 9 went and did an interesting thing[1]. They implemented a macro > > just for man page cross-references. > > I am amazed you found that so quickly. > > > * Uses \X escapes to throw X commands at the output device enabling the > > synthesis of a URL with appropriately placed link text boundaries. > > This I did back in 2004, for what it's worth. > > > Here's what I would have done differently or in addition. > > > > * Named the macro MR ("manual reference") to give it even more semantic > > weight. If "IM" is mnemonic for something, I haven't figured out > > what. > > It was "italic manual reference", but I took your suggestion and > changed it to MR. > Thanks! > > > * Implemented that string macro, and probably called it MF ("manref > > font") or "RF" (reference font). > > * Broken the syntactical parallel with .IR, thus: > > .MR page-name section [hidden-page-anchor] > > I broke the parallel with IR as well, but differently. > $3 is the roman punctuation to follow (without spaces) > after the manual reference (1). Like: > > See > .IR cat (1) . > > > * Added support for another string, perhaps 'MB' ("manref base"?), > > supplying a base URL which can be set at page-generation time. > > Embedding a full URL in man pages sources to an inherently relocatable > > page hierarchy is a bad idea. > > For what it's worth, there is no full URL embedded in the sources. > The references are all from other manual pages, so the refs inserted > are just relative links like "../man1/cat.html". > > > [2] Actually I'm a little puzzled here--as I read the diff, the .nh > > request is retained in .IR, rather than being moved to the new .IM). > > That was a copy-paste error. I've added the .nh to IM as well. > (It's in all the macros; it wasn't specific to IR.) Thanks! > > Best, > Russ > >
