Re: url's in --help output

[Jim Meyering]

address@hidden (Karl Berry) wrote:
> Sorry for the delayed reply.
>
>     > What do you think of this followup, which makes complete sentences, and
>     > consistently brackets URLs inside <>?
>     ...
> +  printf (_("%s home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/%s/>.\n"),
> +  printf (_("General help using GNU software: 
> <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>.\n"));
>
> Obviously it's not a big deal, but I'm not crazy about it.
>
> 1) The two above aren't sentences.
> 2) Adding punctuation around url's just makes them more painful to cut
>    and paste.  It's easiest when it's bare text at the end of a line.
>
> What is gained?
>
> If we want consistency with the three lines, it could be something like:
>
> Email address for bug reports: @var{mailing-address}
> @var{pkg} home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/@var{pkg}/
> General help using GNU software: http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/
>
> Of course it's not strictly necessary, but it'd be nice for the
> standards and gnulib to match, one way or the other.

Hi Karl,

I too have been annoyed with the punctuation around links
like that.  So in the spirit of setting a good example,
here's what would need to be done to adjust the 100+
programs in coreutils to print --help like you suggest,
while retaining sensible formatting in man pages.

Teaching help2man not to format the REPORTING BUGS sections
wasn't hard, but...

I don't feel very strongly about this either,
so would be happy to throw this patch away -- or to apply it.

What do others think?


diff --git a/man/help2man b/man/help2man
index d680425..7b7ce7a 100755
--- a/man/help2man
+++ b/man/help2man
@@ -607,6 +607,9 @@ for my $sect (@pre, (grep ! /^($filter)$/o, @include), 
@post)
            # Convert some latin1 chars to troff equivalents
            s/\xa0/\\ /g; # non-breaking space

+           $sect eq 'REPORTING BUGS'
+               and s/\n(.)/\n.br\n$1/g;
+
            print;
        }
     }
diff --git a/src/system.h b/src/system.h
index fb86498..d56a5d1 100644
--- a/src/system.h
+++ b/src/system.h
@@ -619,12 +619,12 @@ ptr_align (void const *ptr, size_t alignment)
 static inline void
 emit_bug_reporting_address (void)
 {
-  printf (_("\nReport %s bugs to <%s>.\n"), last_component (program_name),
+  printf (_("\nReport %s bugs to %s\n"), last_component (program_name),
          PACKAGE_BUGREPORT);
   /* FIXME 2010: use AC_PACKAGE_URL once we require autoconf-2.64 */
-  printf (_("%s home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/%s/>.\n"),
+  printf (_("%s home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/%s/\n";),
          PACKAGE_NAME, PACKAGE);
-  fputs (_("General help using GNU software: 
<http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>.\n"),
+  fputs (_("General help using GNU software: http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/\n";),
         stdout);

   /* TRANSLATORS: Replace LANG_CODE in this URL with your language code