Re: Milestone reached: hyperlinked mdoc(7) documents in PDF

[Alejandro Colomar]

Hi Branden!

On Fri, Mar 22, 2024 at 11:30:11AM -0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> Hi Alex,
> 
> At 2024-03-17T23:44:07+0100, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> > On Sun, Mar 17, 2024 at 05:23:20PM -0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> > > Following up my earlier announcement regarding man(7),[1], I'm
> > > pleased to report that we have a functioning PDF hyperlink story for
> > > the mdoc package.
> [...]
> > > P.S. Alex, you might want to consider simplifying your cover page
> > >      similarly once you bring your copy of groff up to date.
> > 
> > How much would you consider having a release sooner than expected, and
> > then have what originally would have been 1.24.0 be 1.25.0?  :)
> 
> Not very much.  As I noted previously, I'm still not the official GNU
> maintainer of groff.  (This is partly procrastination and partly
> consideration for Bertrand's very tight time budget for GNU work.)

Please, please :)

> 
> > I would prefer using a packaged version of groff, for two reasons:
> > 
> > -  I got impedance mismatches, when I see stuff like the 5n base-
> >    paragraph indent, but contributors are still seeing 7n.
> 
> Fair.  You _can_, of course, configure groff Git to replicate the output
> line arrangement of groff 1.23.0 and earlier, with `-rBP=7n -rLL=78n`.

I'm not a fan of configuring stuff either, because then I forget that I
did.  And I do like 5n.  I would like others to also have it, rather
than not having it myself.  :)

> > -  In my server, I have a script that builds the man-pages book for
> >    every push to the main branch (true for both the Linux man-pages
> >    and shadow), and another that runs the lints and checks for the
> >    Linux man-pages.  Having built-from-source software in my computer
> >    is less of a problem, but in a server, it's less comfortable.  (I
> >    already have Deri's branch in there, and I'm not in love with
> >    that.)
> 
> You're a good person to ask; is there anything from Deri's branch that
> Linux man-pages still needs?

I started using it because of the cyrillic shadow manual pages.
groff-1.23.0 has issues with them.

If you have some time for it, I'll bombard you with some questions and
requests for the Linux man-pages book-generating scripts.  :)

>  I know it has some stuff you probably
> _don't_ need, like the slanted symbol font and a new approach to
> associating glyphs in groff font description files with Unicode code
> points.
> 
> > But yeah, I'm willing to simplify as much as possible!  ;)
> 
> I won't pressure you.  If I recall correctly I still owe you another
> preliminary to the Most Disruptive Automated Change Ever Unleashed on a
> Man Page Corpus ("MR.sed"), that being something to do with man page
> cross references inside tbl(1) tables.  I'll have to review the email
> thread from January.

I don't remember what was remaining, but I think almost everything was
done.  We are missing just the final pieces, IIRC.  Still, if you manage
to simplify the sed(1) script by applying some pre-patches, it would be
easier to review.

Which reminds me of the discussion about PGP signatures on patches we
had some moons ago (something that Deri reminded me unintentionally
recently too): Deri posted a gigantic patch with a new font for
supporting the zh_CN manual pages from shadow in the PDF book.  But he
didn't sign anything, and he just posted a link to his (HTTP) web server
where his patch is hosted for me to wget(1).  Now, how am I supposed to
get that patch without anyone tampering it during its trip to my
computer?  :(

> By the time I get to it, the argument that groff 1.23 is "too new" will
> be pretty feeble...

Actually, I didn't pressure you, because that might give some time to
Ingo to add support for MR in mandoc(1).  But I didn't hear anything
from him in a long time.  But yeah, I'm ready to patch the Linux
man-pages whenever you send your next revision.

Have a lovely Spring!
Alex

> Regards,
> Branden


-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>
Looking for a remote C programming job at the moment.

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