Re: [htmlxref.cnf] Please update link to the Groff manual

[G. Branden Robinson]

[self-follow-up]

At 2023-09-30T15:59:13-0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> I concede that having a working "/html_node/" URL by hook or by crook
> (or by symlink) is probably a good idea given the list of URLs linking
> to it that you presented above.

I find I have a problem with this after all, or at least with a subset
of it.  The problem is that the URLs for the node-based HTML rendering
are dependent on the titles/names of the nodes in the document, and
those are not stable.  (They should not be expected to be, unless a
Texinfo manual in this format should not be put in a public location
until it is frozen in some manner, which is tautologically a pretty
inflexible approach.)

I see that GNU Autoconf, for examples, keeps versioned URLs of older
revisions of its manual online.

https://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/autoconf-2.60/html_node/Programming-in-M4sh.html

Autoconf 2.60 is pretty long in the tooth--recklessly using the
technique that recently pantsed me regarding groff's own release
history,[1] it looks about 17 years old.

So while changing the name of the directory back to html_node will fix
some broken link problems, it won't fix them all, and it won't be robust
in the face of future development.  I'm fairly neutral on the
"html_node" vs. "groff.html.node" naming issue, but I'm downright
_opposed_ to limiting my (or future contributors') flexibility in
updating, expanding, reducing, or otherwise mutating the node names of
the groff Texinfo manual.  Those shackles are much too tight.

I don't want to go to the GNU site admins with requests to set up
unmaintainable-in-CVS symbolic links (or HTTP redirects in the web
server, whatever they think best) to resurrect some dead links until
we've decided this issue.  So here's what I propose.

A.  Put the groff 1.22.4 manual back online, probably as

https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/groff-1.22.4/html_node/

...and have

https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/html_node/

symlink/redirect to it.

That would fix the following links.
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/converting-a-man-page-with-pandoc.36706/
https://lists.defectivebydesign.org/archive/html/groff/2020-10/msg00066.html
[defectivebydesign.org is gnu.org in disguise]
https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1189607/FULLTEXT01.pdf

As well as the following "deep links".

https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/html_node/gtroff-Output.html#gtroff-Output
  from https://git.pwmt.org/pwmt/zathura/-/issues/258

https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/html_node/Page-Control.html#Page-Control
  from https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor/issues/3992

https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/html_node/Man-usage.html
  from https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues/5019

https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/html_node/History.html
  from https://lwn.net/Articles/912260/

https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/html_node/preconv.html#preconv
  from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36066812

http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/html_node/Using-Symbols.html
  from https://perldoc.perl.org/Pod::Perldoc::ToMan.txt

https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/html_node/ms-Strings-and-Special-Characters.html#ms-Strings-and-Special-Characters
  from 
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/623970/writing-vietnamese-in-groff

https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/html_node/Setting-Registers.html
  from https://www.illumos.org/issues/9367

https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/html_node/ms-Headers-and-Footers.html
  from https://www.reddit.com/r/groff/comments/gbfsx4/page_number_position/

(All of these links to the groff's Texinfo manual were identified by
Ingo.  As he pointed out, there are surely more.)

Okay, I am reminded why the suits hate deep linking.  :-|

B.  ...well, let me look a little deeper into what GNU Autoconf is
    doing.  First let's see what people think of part (A).

Regards,
Branden

[1] https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/

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