Re: macOS Terminal man page URL format

[G. Branden Robinson]

Hi John,

At 2023-02-06T18:53:10+1100, John Gardner wrote:
> While I *strongly* advocate for the man:name(section) syntax (because
> it essentially dates right back to the earliest man pages), it would
> be remiss of me to ignore the other formats listed above.
>
> > But...ugh!  I don't remember this coming up before, but it could
> > have.
>
> I vaguely recall mentioning it some time ago, although you dismissed
> it in favour of enforcing a single, consistent URL syntax.

I remember now why I wanted to cast the issue aside, and I'd have
remembered last night if my brain hadn't wanted me to just go to bed.

> man:name.section          - Bwana        (macOS)
> man:name(section)         - GNOME, KDE   (Linux)
> x-man-doc://3/printf(3)   - ManOpen      (macOS)
> x-man-page://section/name - Terminal.app (macOS 10.3+)

Having a configurable prefix/schema isn't going to cut it.  The entire
form of the URL has to be changed.  Double ugh!  And the schema doesn't
unambiguously indicate the remainder of the URL format.  Triple ugh!

I'll do something simple to limp us over the finish line, but I have to
say I really hate this and I want macOS to get its act together.  Which
Apple will almost certainly do by contriving the most rest-of-world-
ostile and -incompatible alternative it can.  (Whither went that
that boldly conformist, "let's embrace the world's worst ISA" attitude
of the 2005 WWDC?)

Well, at least BSD partisans will get a kick out of that, even if it's
Pareto-shitty for everyone else.  Somewhere, Charles Hannum laughs.

Regards,
Branden

signature.asc
Description: PGP signature