Re: ⟨ vs < in hostname man page of hostname

[Jonny Grant <jg@jguk.org>]

On 07/08/2023 16:13, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> Hi Jonny,
> 
> On 2023-08-07 15:47, Jonny Grant wrote:
>> Hi Alejhandro
>>
>> Just looking at the COLOPHON
>> https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/hostname.1.html
> 
> ```
> COLOPHON         top
> 
>        This page is part of the net-tools (networking utilities)
>        project.  Information about the project can be found at 
>        ⟨http://net-tools.sourceforge.net/⟩.  If you have a bug report for
>        this manual page, see ⟨http://net-tools.sourceforge.net/⟩.  This
>        page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
>        ⟨git://git.code.sf.net/p/net-tools/code⟩ on 2023-06-23.  (At that
>        time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
>        repository was 2021-12-12.)  If you discover any rendering
>        problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
>        is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
>        corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
>        (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
>        man-pages@man7.org
> ```
> 
>>
>>
>> Noticed that sometimes the '⟨' doesn't render, perhaps it is not in all fonts, would it be possible to use consider using regular '<' and '>' character in the man page?
> 
> That is implemented using man(7)'s UR, which is for URIs.  The source
> code of the manual page doesn't know about the glyph that will be
> produced in your system.  In your system, groff(1) will try to find
> the most appropriate one.  You (or your distributor) can also tweak
> that.  You can for example change it to use ASCII '<' and '>'.
> 
> In man7.org, I guess that you read it correctly from any machine.
> In your systems' pages there's no COLOPHON anymore (I removed it
> in man-pages-6.01).  If you're on an old system, you can tweak it.
> 
> But you'll still see that character in pages that have URIs in them.
> For example, let's consider hier(7):
> 
>     $ grep -n '^\.UR ' man7/hier.7;
>     640:.UR https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/fhs.shtml
> 
> which renders as (including the whole section):
> 
> STANDARDS
>        The   Filesystem   Hierarchy   Standard   (FHS),   Version  3.0
>        ⟨https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/fhs.shtml⟩,     published
>        March 19, 2015


Fair enough. Some pages even have both. I saw sometime <> is used, as I expected, other times '⟨⟩' . "SEE ALSO"

https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/cp.1.html

But though "COLOPHON" looks like it was appended by a man7 website script with the '⟨⟩' instead, so I thought maybe that could be changed for consistency to <>. There are so many different characters that could be used, but <> is on every keyboard :)
Kind regards, Jonny

>>  Or even just no angle brackets at all, it's not that common to enclose links in <>
> 
> I'm sorry, but that's not an option.  Links /must/ be enclosed in
> some other pair of unambiguous quoting, such as <> or "".  See uri(7):
> 
>    Writing a URI
>        When written, URIs should be placed inside double quotes (e.g.,
>        "http://www.kernel.org"), enclosed  in  angle  brackets  (e.g.,
>        <http://lwn.net>),  or placed on a line by themselves.  A warn‐
>        ing for those who  use  double‐quotes:  never  move  extraneous
>        punctuation  (such as the period ending a sentence or the comma
>        in a list) inside a URI, since this will change  the  value  of
>        the  URI.   Instead, use angle brackets instead, or switch to a
>        quoting system that never includes extraneous characters inside
>        quotation marks.  This latter system, called the ’new’ or ’log‐
>        ical’ quoting system by "Hart’s Rules" and the "Oxford  Dictio‐
>        nary  for  Writers and Editors", is preferred practice in Great
>        Britain and in various  European  languages.   Older  documents
>        suggested  inserting the prefix "URL:" just before the URI, but
>        this form has never caught on.
> 
>        The URI syntax was designed to  be  unambiguous.   However,  as
>        URIs  have  become  commonplace, traditional media (television,
>        radio, newspapers, billboards, etc.) have increasingly used ab‐
>        breviated URI references consisting of only the  authority  and
>        path portions of the identified resource (e.g., <www.w3.org/Ad‐
>        dressing>).   Such  references are primarily intended for human
>        interpretation rather than machine, with  the  assumption  that
>        context‐based  heuristics  are  sufficient  to complete the URI
>        (e.g., hostnames beginning with "www" are likely to have a  URI
>        prefix  of  "http://" and hostnames beginning with "ftp" likely
>        to have a prefix of  "ftp://").   Many  client  implementations
>        heuristically  resolve  these  references.  Such heuristics may
>        change over time, particularly when new schemes are introduced.
>        Since an abbreviated URI has the same syntax as a relative  URL
>        path,  abbreviated URI references cannot be used where relative
>        URIs are permitted, and can be used only when there is  no  de‐
>        fined  base  (such  as in dialog boxes).  Don’t use abbreviated
>        URIs as hypertext links inside a  document;  use  the  standard
>        format as described here.
> 
> Cheers,
> Alex
> 
>>
>> https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/hostname.1.html
>>
>> Kind regards, Jonny
>