On Sat, 30 Oct 2021 14:48:46 -0700 Larry McVoy <[email protected]> wrote:
> If James is suggesting that dangling links are not helpful, I find > the opposite to be true. I too have benefited from pursuing hints I found in SEE ALSO, even for uninstalled software. I remember one weekend searching to for a free implementation of ideal(1). My example was just a starting point. If references to uninstalled items are to appear in man pages, I do think they should indicate when they're inaccessible via the man system. If I were a web guy, I'd say no SEE ALSO link should end in 404. I'm proposing we consider a tool that packaging systems could use to eliminate dangling links. If instead of being simply deleted, they are somehow marked, OK. What form should that take? Simplest might be a static string (such as "(not installed)") appended to each item. Or, they could be moved to another heading, or subheading. They could be annotated with the .Nd line and/or homepage URL, or the name of the package that contains it. To be concrete, I'm asking the groff community how would you change > .Xr mg 1 , to reflect the fact that there's no "mg" on this system? To be clear, I'm actually fine deleting it, but I wouldn't insist. The NetBSD base system includes editline(3), and (I assume) intentionally doesn't mention mg. I would say that's SOP for curated pages presented as a set. But that doesn't mean it can't be improved on. --jkl
