Re: [Groff] Handling without colors for .URL and .MTO in www.tmac

[Keith Marshall]

On Monday 08 August 2005 7:56 pm, Jörgen Grahn wrote:
> On Mon Aug  8 18:59:32 2005, address@hidden wrote:
> > .URL and .MTO use the color blue.  But if colors are not active they
> > print in the normal font.  This is not impressive.
> >
> > The appended patch uses the bold font instead of blue.
>
> I must admit that I've never used www.tmac, but it seems to me to be
> desirable that the non-HTML output can be customized by the macro user.

I tend to agree with Jörgen on this -- the user shouldn't be forced to accept 
blue, or any other colour, or any specific font either;  IMO, he should have 
the option to declare his own choice, through some appropriate register or 
string.  For example, in `pdfmark', which also supports active URLs, I have 
provided the PDFHREF.COLOUR string, (or PDFHREF.COLOR if you prefer), 
specified as an RGB triplet, which the user may customise to suit his own 
personal preference.

> For example, I don't like the blue color, but I also don't like Courier for
> the URL itself-- I prefer to typeset URLs in italics so they don't break up
> the surrounding text too much.

Hmm.  Again considering the `pdfmark' analogy, I didn't think of any such 
option for PDF links or URLs.  The effect could be achieved by embedding font 
change escapes in the optional prefix and suffix strings specified in the 
`.pdfhref' call, but would you like to see something like a PDFHREF.FONT 
control for it?

> I like the <>-like glyphs surrounding the URL, though.

Like Jörgen, I've not really explored www.tmac either.  Are these hard coded? 
Some users may not like them, so would it not be better if they were 
optional?  Something along the lines of the `-P prefix' and `-A suffix' 
options to `.pdfhref' perhaps?  (These BTW, could be used to achieve the same 
effect for a URL in a PDF document, e.g.

    .pdfhref W -P < -A > "http://groff.ffii.org";

would print `<http://groff.ffii.org>', with the angle brackets in the regular 
text colour, and the interposed link in the PDFHREF.COLOUR).

> My two cents,
> Jörgen

I guess it should be tuppence, in my case :-)
Keith.