Re: groff `Lk' badness

[Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@usta.de>]

Hi Kristaps,

> By way of a note by Aldis Berzoja, it seems that `Lk' has some
> mysterious behaviour we should clarify.

Thanks to Aldis for reporting!

> Input:
> 
> .Lk foo bar baz xyzzy
> 
> groff Output:
> 
>      bar: foo baz xyzzy
> 
> Where "bar:" is underlined and the rest is in bold.
> 
> So it looks like "bar" is the link, as underlined things make us
> think of links.

I think here is the source of the confusion.

> That would make "foo" be the link name (bold text)
> and damned if I know why "baz" and "xyzzy" are also in bold.
> This is confusing, because in fact `Lk' is documented as being link
> first, link-name second (cutting off at two arguments and continuing
> the formatting is probably a groff bug).

Right, the latter (in parantheses) is what i think, too.

> mandoc formats its output as "foo: bar baz xyzzy",

I think this is wrong, and

  "bar baz xyzzy: foo"

would be better.

> but I think this is misleading because the ":" is a reserved
> token in the URI spec.

Yes.

And think of it the following way:

  Here are some web sites of BSD operating systems:
  .br
  .Lk http://www.dragonflybsd.org/ "DragonFly BSD"
  .br
  .Lk http://www.freebsd.org/ FreeBSD
  .br
  .Lk http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD
  .br
  .Lk http://www.openbsd.org/ OpenBSD

Rendering that as

  Here are some web sites of BSD operating systems:
  DragonFly BSD:
        http://www.dragonflybsd.org/
  FreeBSD: http://www.freebsd.org/
  NetBSD: http://www.netbsd.org/
  OpenBSD: http://www.openbsd.org/

seems quite natural, doesn't it?
I wouldn't expect the URI to precede its description.

> Can we come to an agreement as to how this should be formatted?  I
> don't want to be bug-compatible with groff in this case.  I like the
> "link: link-name" output, but due to the colon being a URI reserved
> token, "link-name: link" makes more sense,

Definitely.

> with link-name being bold and link being underlined.

Well, normally, you click on the link *name*, so underlining that
makes sense.  Besides, diverging from what groff does seems
gratuitous in this particular respect.

> Thoughts?

The real mess is here:

  schwarze@rhea $ /usr/local/bin/groff --version | head -n1
  GNU groff version 1.20.1
  schwarze@rhea $ /usr/local/bin/groff -mdoc -Thtml link.in
  [...]
  NetBSD:</i> <b>http://www.netbsd.org/</b> <i><br>
  OpenBSD:</i> <b>http://www.openbsd.org/</b></p>

Groff doesn't even attempt to produce real hyperlinks
in -Thtml mode.  Is this true?

I think we should have something similar to:

  <a href="http://www.netbsd.org/">NetBSD</a>:
  <b>http://www.netbsd.org/</b>

Yours,
  Ingo
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