Re: [Groff] Progress report on the portability audit -- and what to do about URLs?

[Werner LEMBERG]

> I am about three-quarters of the way through cleaning up the groff
> manual pages to be viewer-portable.  The new versions will also be
> simpler, shorter, and easier to read than the old.  I've done these
> so far: [...]

If you've reached a satisfying level, please mail them to me.

> Many groff pages use the www.tmac macros .URL and .MTO.  [...]

> (2) Add portable implementations of .URL and .MTO to an-old.tmac

Not to an-old.tmac, but to the proposed an-ext.tmac.  This is my
preferred choice.

Perhaps something like this:

  .if \n(.g \{\
  .  do mso www.tmac
  .  do als UR URL
  .  do als MT MTO
  .\}
  .el \{\
  .  de UR
  .  ...
  .  de MT
  .  ...
  .\}

together with an update of www.tmac which says that man pages should
only use the two macros .UR and MT (which would be aliases to .URL and
.MTO, respectively).


     Werner