man pages and help topics

[Matt Mackall]

On Tue, 2010-10-19 at 22:40 +0200, Martin Geisler wrote:
> Mads Kiilerich <mads at kiilerich.com> writes:
> 
> > On 10/19/2010 02:44 PM, Martin Geisler wrote:
> >> Mads Kiilerich<mads at kiilerich.com>  writes:
> >>> Man pages are unix only and they are hard to reference and navigate
> >>> (especially because our pages are so long).
> >>
> >> Hmm, I have no problem referencing them
> >
> > Now we have to use inexact and verbose descriptions for "linking" to
> > hgrc, such as what Erik is fighting:
> >
> > "merge-tools section - see hgrc(1)"
> >
> > "See merge tools and ui section of configuration help on setting the
> > merge tools"
> >
> > "See the merge-tools and ui sections of |hgrc(5)|_ for details
> > on configuration of merge tools."
> >
> > Semantic markup like :hgrc:`merge-tools` and :hgrc:`ui.merge` would be
> > much more helpful.
> 
> Ah, now I see what you mean. That would be a nice syntax!
> 
> >> The HTML version of the manpages already has nice links for cross
> >> references, such as this example where 'hg add' links to 'hg forget':
> >>
> >>    http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/hg.1.html#add
> >
> > Yes, very nice, more of that, please - especially to and from hgrc ...
> > which would be a lot easier if hgrc was a help topic ;-)
> 
> Yes and no... there are already some anchors in the hgrc.5.html file:
> 
>   http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/hgrc.5.html#patch
> 
> But there is no way to link to a specific setting such as patch.eol.
> Turning the whole file into a single help topic will not really change
> that -- creating more headers will.
> 
> > (btw: http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/hgrc.5.html is pre-a86fd45c1911
> > and thus more than 3 months old.)
> 
> Strange, I'm sure Matt said he had made a crontab that would refresh it
> every couple of hours.

I do. It fires at 6PM CST. But it's (naturally) based on the stable
branch.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.