Re: Groff macro to make .UR and .UE links clickable in PDF?

[John Gardner]

Steve's list left out one other URL-handling strategy: omit them altogether
if they aren't needed:

*HTML:*

<a target="_blank" href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6455";>RFC 6455</a>

<a target="_blank" href="
https://adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/devnet/actionscript/articles/PLRM.pdf#page=144";>PostScript
Language Reference Manual, page 130</a>


*Text:*

RFC 6455

PostScript Language Reference Manual, page 130


*@B 9:* If you're interested in PDF and hyperlinking, you might find this
<https://rawgit.com/Alhadis/Roff.js/web-demo/index.html> useful
<https://github.com/Alhadis/Roff.js>. :-)


On Wed, 17 Jun 2020 at 19:10, Raf Czlonka <rczlonka@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 07:27:58PM BST, Steve Izma wrote:
> >
> > I find the whole idea of typesetting URLs in printed matter to be
> > full of contradictions, but this is mostly on account of how
> > contemporary Web frameworks construct URLs for dynamic pages and
> > need all sorts of variables set in the posted URL. If Web sites
> > were set up with mostly static pages in a normally organized
> > filesystem hierarchy, URLs would be simpler and more likely human
> > readable. As it is, no one is going to retype a URL that's longer
> > than a few words from a printed page. From an online PDF, the URL
> > shouldn't actually be typeset, I'd argue, but hidden in the link.
> >
> > Anyway, my strategies for typesetting for a printed document:
> >
> > - test the URL iteratively by removing as much as possible from
> >   the end of the URL until you have the minimum number of
> >   characters for getting to the page; usually this means removing
> >   all the set variables;
> > - if the resulting URL is longer than the output line length,
> >   break the line and begin the URL on the next line
> > - there are well-established rules for breaking a URL, which
> >   include: never add a hyphen to show a break; break the line
> >   such that the beginning of the next line looks like a
> >   continuation of the URL, e.g., with a slash;
> > - don't set the URL at all in the body of the text but use a
> >   footnote or endnote marker and set the URL in the footnote or
> >   endnote, since these are usually set in a smaller point size
> >   and gives you more flexibility for fitting on lines; if a text
> >   contains a lot of URLS, then set the notes as endnotes in a
> >   longer line length, if possible;
> > - some publishers use a style that ignores any part of the URL
> >   other than the site location; they expect that once the reader
> >   gets to the Web site, they can use the site's search mechanism
> >   for finding the appropriate material;
> > - since URLs are notoriously short-lived, encourage authors not
> >   to use them at all but to cite printed material rather than
> >   online material, or give complete bibliographic information
> >   about the citation and a short reference to the home page of
> >   the site.
> >
> > One of the key issues is that a printed work is very likely to
> > outlast the accuracy of a URL, so don't diminish the usefulness
> > of a printed work but relying on URLs.
> >
>
> Hi Steve at al.,
>
> My £0.02, and a first post here :^)
>
> A quick comment - somewhat related to the matter at hand.
>
> Some of the above are covered by URL scheme guidelines such as
> Clean URL[0]. Other can be remedied by concepts such as PURL[1].
> None of it is panacea but good place to start, IMHO.
>
> [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_URL
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_uniform_resource_locator
>
> Regards,
>
> Raf
>
>