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

[Steve Izma]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2020 at 06:18:58PM +0200, Ingo Schwarze wrote:
> Subject: Re: Groff macro to make .UR and .UE links clickable in PDF?
> 
Re: changing the URL submitted by an author so that it fits
typographical requirements.

> There is nothing wrong with the document author doing that in cases
> where it works together with the surrounding text, if and when the
> surrounding text provides sufficient context.
> 
> But please don't change what the author writes behind the author's
> back, and least of all breaking existing documents.

That would be a problem, but the publishing process needs to be a
collaborative effort meeting the needs of both the typesetter and
the author -- the typesetter is, after all, responsible for
making the author's text readable. In fact, most publishers (even
the publishing co-ops that I'm usually involved with) impose the
design rules on the author, but "errors of fact" (which a broken
URL would be) need to be fixed with agreement of both parties.

> > I think it's an abomination that a man page extends it's line
> > length to fit the width of the terminal;
> 
> That's exactly why the mandoc implementation of the man(1) program
> doesn't do that.  Try it with a very wide virtual terminal window
> on an operating system like OpenBSD, Alpine Linux, or Void Linux;
> or on Fedora Linux with the "use mandoc as man" configuration option
> enabled; or on any other Linux with a mandoc package installed and
> enabled as man(1) by hand....

That's good to know; thanks.

> > It's interesting
> > that the Python Style Guide insists on a maximum line length of
> > 79 characters and recommends 72. A basic premise of python design
> > is *readability of code*.

> The main reason of keeping the limit at 78 and not reducing it to,
> for example, 70 is that many existing manual pages have been written
> to look good with a limit of 78, and displaying them with a smaller
> width sometimes causes awkward line breaks.  Not a huge deal, but
> then again, 78 isn't that bad for readability either, in particular
> given that there is a left margin of five display columns for mdoc(7)
> and seven display columns for man(7) by default.

Yes, that's a good point about left margins. But my python
reference was about the readability of python code.

        -- Steve

-- 
Steve Izma
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Home: 35 Locust St., Kitchener, Ontario, Canada  N2H 1W6
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==
I have always felt the necessity to verify what to many seemed a
simple multiplication table.
        -- Ilya Ehrenburg (Soviet author and critic; he's not
           talking about mathematics)