Re: Why are Groff's macro packages not PDF-aware by default?

[James K. Lowden]

On Mon, 15 Jun 2020 21:24:23 +1000
John Gardner <gardnerjohng@gmail.com> wrote:

> Modifying the macro packages to use these features wouldn't be hard.
> It's simply a matter of
> 
> .if '\*(.T'pdf' .if d pdfmark \{\
> 
> .    pdfmark ?
> 
> .\}

+1

I'm glad B 9 asked the question, because I've been meaning to try to
synthesize the status of hyperlink support in groff from the various
component documents.  We've had hyperlinks in HTML and PDF for decades
now, but they're an afterthought in groff, not to mention totally
unsupported by the system most used to view man pages, namely nroff +
less.  

In the same neighborhood is the mdoc .Xr, which should also be able to
create a hyperlink.  It's not clear to me whether or not it always
should or, if not, whether that should be controlled by a register, or
type of output, or by invocation.  

If someone does the macro magic to make hyperlinks Just Work in man,
mdoc, and ms, I'll volunteer to do the grunt work of adding them to the
groff man pages.  

--jkl