Re: [Wishlist] .MT/.ME: The mailto link doesn't contain the name

[Alejandro Colomar (man-pages)]

Hi Branden,

On 1/25/22 17:12, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> Hi, Alex,
> 
> Quite bizarrely, I did not get this message in my inbox, nor even in my
> spam folder.  Thanks, GMail!  :-|
> 
> At 2022-01-24T22:32:13+0100, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
>> Some wish.  For the following code:
>>
>> [
>> .MT alx.manpages@gmail.com
>> Alejandro Colomar
>> .ME .
>> ]
>>
>> The produced html output is
>>
>> <a href="mailto:alx.manpages@gmail.com";>Alejandro
>> Colomar</a>
>>
>> The visual output shows the full name, but when you want to send an
>> email, that is discarded.  It would be nicer, IMHO, to have the
>> following code:
>>
>> <a href="mailto:Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@gmail.com>">Alejandro
>> Colomar</a>
>>
>> Any thoughts?
> 
> My main question about this is, is it permitted by RFC 6068?
> 
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6068#page-3
> 
> My quick glance over the meaning of an "addr-spec" suggests that it is
> not, but I have not read this standardese in depth.


It seems that there was once an RFC that supported the widely used
mailto scheme with proper names, but was obsoleted (why?!).

<https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8147805/the-mailto-setting-a-proper-name-on-the-recipient>

> 
> If it's standards-complaint and can be widely expected to work, that
> helps, but then we might need an additional argument for the MT macro to
> specify or suppress the addition you're proposing.

So I guess that it's then a matter of supporting a (IMO, useful)
obsoleted standard or not.  I guess this idiom can be expected to work,
since most programs (or at least those that I use) that understand
mailto understand it.

> 
> For instance, if someone clicked such a link from a man page that
> editorialized as follows...
> 
> .SH Bugs
> Hyphens, minuses, dashes, horizontal arrow extensions, and open doors in
> vertical walls in NetHack are all the same to us, but try telling that

I played NetHack (glhack) just now for the first time.  It was very
entertaining, and very frustrating (ed(1) level of frustration) at the
beginning.  Nice game, and nice doors :)

> to
> .MT groff@gnu.org
> the jackasses who maintain groff
> .ME .
> 
> ...it could lead to unintentional entertainment.

:p

> 
> Regards,
> Branden

-- 
Alejandro Colomar
Linux man-pages comaintainer; https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/