Re: groff_man_style.7: Hyperlink macros: \: before or after '#', '?'?

[G. Branden Robinson]

Hi Ralph,

At 2022-02-08T08:54:38+0000, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> Hi Branden,
> 
> > To keep things exciting, existing email addresses in groff man pages
> > tend to put the break _after_ the '@'.
> 
> Good.  That way it acts, as does a hyphen, in indicating to the reader
> there's more to come.  As would ‘?’ or ‘&’ at the end of a line
> in a URL.

On the other hand, as I noted before, in an HTTP GET request, these
symbols, to be meaningful, must be followed by further content.

I think the hyphenation analogy gets strained here.  Or maybe it
doesn't--if we admit to the conceit that the reader is expected to be a
meatspace interpreter instead of one comprised of logic gates.

Consider the distinction between the "soft" and "hard" hyphens; when a
"hard" hyphen appears at the end of a line, as when discusses long-
term plans [sic], the reader is expected to know _not_ to elide it if
using the same term in unbroken text.  But a soft hyphen is always
omitted in that context.

I reckon the thing to do is to discuss the advantages of each placement
in the '?' and '&' cases and encourage authors to think for themselves.
We have only one instance of either symbol in a URI in our own man page
corpus.

$ git grep 'UR.*[&?]' *.man *.man.in
contrib/rfc1345/groff_rfc1345.7.man:.UR https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?59932

Amusingly, I neglected to put any break points at all in that.

Regards,
Branden

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