modal man(7) extensions for groff and man-db man(1) (was: Manual page sections shouting)

["G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com>]

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Hi Lennart,

At 2023-01-10T17:21:54+0000, Lennart Jablonka wrote:
> Quoth G. Branden Robinson:
> > _If_ we added yet another groff extension to man(7), analogous to
> > mdoc(7)'s `Sx`, we could support hyperlinks directly to man page
> > sections and subsections.  (On terminals, we'd still need a way to
> > mark locations in the page text as link targets, and for it to be
> > practically useful, pagers would have to grow more features.  Given
> > the amount of idiocy, particularly from people who think that a URL
> > in a terminal window is a security risk in some way that a URL on a
> > web page isn't, that Egmont Koblinger has had to put up with in
> > promulgating OSC 8, I would not count on the infrastructure for this
> > materializing soon.)  But for PDF all the pieces are in place; they
> > just need some glue in the groff man(7) package.
> 
> Surely man(1) and man(7) could coorperate to produce a tags file that
> could be used by a pager.  On OpenBSD, you can use less(1)’s :t to
> jump to a bunch of stuff in a man page.

I like this idea.  It meshes well with another I've had to eliminate the
necessity for lexgrog(1) by supporting a mode (selected by a register or
string specified at formatting time) where the page formats the contents
of the "Name" section, and _only_ that, and exits (technically, `nx`es).

It would be up to man(1) to stuff the tag output into a temporary file
and tell less(1) to use it, but that sort of thing is consistent with
its existing feature set, I think.

Regards,
Branden

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