Re: [docbook-apps] relative links in roff man pages

["Michael(tm) Smith" <smith@sideshowbarker.net>]

Hi Sam,

> @2008-09-10 11:14 -0400:
>  I see these in the generated clisp manpages 
>  <http://clisp.podval.org/clisp.1> (in the NOTES section):
> 
>          2. read-eval-print loop
>             [set $man.base.url.for.relative.links]/sec_25-1-1
> 
>         10. SYMBOL-MACRO
>             [set $man.base.url.for.relative.links]/mac_define-symbol-macro
> [...]
>  not many, but unpleasant, so I would like to fix them.
>  clearly $man.base.url.for.relative.links is not appropriate because items 12 
>  has a different base URL. (yes, I read
>  http://docbook.xml-doc.org/snapshots/xsl/doc/manpages/man.base.url.for.relative.links.html)

I added that param because the git man pages are full of links to
the online git docs, with relative URLs. So I wanted those to
actually have the full URLs. I hadn't considered how it might
monkey with customizations like yours. I thought that if you unset
man.base.url.for.relative.links.html, you'd get the same behavior
as what you'd get in previous releases (before I added the param).
But from what you're saying, I guess that's not the case.

>  these notes come from elements like these:
> 
>  <ulink role="clhs" url="sec_25-1-1">read-eval-print loop</ulink>
>  <ulink role="unix" url="basedefs/xbd_chap08.html">environment 
>  variable</ulink>
>  <ulink role="clhs" url="sec_2-4-8-2"><literal 
>  role="data">#&#39;</literal></ulink>
> 
>  which are handled for html by these customizations:
> 
>  <xsl:template match="ulink[@role='unix']">
>   <a class="{@role}" href="{$unix.top}{@url}"><xsl:apply-templates/></a>
>  </xsl:template>
> [...]
>  I wonder how I could adapt these for man pages - what I want to see is 
>  something like
> 
>          2. read-eval-print loop
>             http://www.lisp.org/HyperSpec/sec_25-1-1.html
>         17. continuable
>             http://www.lisp.org/HyperSpec/clhs/glo_c.html
>[...]
>  a lispy approach would be to _bind_ $man.base.url.for.relative.links around 
>  applying the man templates, but I don't know how to do that. Is is feasible?

I would like to help you get a solution figured out, but
unfortunately cannot devote any time to working on the stylesheets
other than reviewing patches and applying them. If you do manage
to get something worked out that would rely on changes to the
upstream stylesheets, I would be happy to look at a patch and
apply. But that's pretty much the extent of the help I can provide
for the time being.

  --Mike

-- 
Michael(tm) Smith
http://people.w3.org/mike/