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

[Eric S. Raymond]

Werner LEMBERG <address@hidden>:
> > 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.

Later today.  I need to resync, make sure others changes' haven't
conflicted with mine, etc.  Also I've got one little remaining glitch in
groff_out translation that I want to resolve.
 
> > 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.

That's what I've done.

> 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).

There's a problem with this.  .UR is already in use on some Linux 
manual pages, paired with .UE.  The usage is

.UR http://foo/bar
Link text
.UE
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>