Re: [PATCH] Documentation: don't link to example mail addresses

From: John Keeping <john@keeping.me.uk>
Date: Dec 15, 2012, 18:24 UTC
Message-ID: <20121215182408.GD2725@river.lan>
In-Reply-To: <20121215172018.GA18696@sigill.intra.peff.net>

On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 12:20:18PM -0500, Jeff King wrote:

Show 25 quoted lines

> On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 03:03:15PM +0000, John Keeping wrote:
>> Mail addresses in documentation are converted into mailto: hyperlinks in
>> the HTML output and footnotes in man pages.  This isn't desirable for
>> cases where the address is used as an example and is not valid.
>> 
>> Particularly annoying is the example "jane@laptop.(none)" which appears
>> in git-shortlog(1) as "jane@laptop[1].(none)", with note 1 saying:
>> 
>> 	1. jane@laptop
>> 	   mailto:jane@laptop
> 
> Thanks, this is definitely worth fixing.
> 
>> Fix this by quoting example mail addresses with "$$", preventing
>> Asciidoc from processing them.
>> 
>> In the case of mailmap.txt, render the address monospaced so that it
>> matches the block examples surrounding that paragraph.
> 
> I think I'd just render them monospace everywhere. We are very
> inconsistent about which form of quotes we use in the documentation (I
> think because most of the developers read the source directly and not
> the rendered asciidoc). And then we don't have to worry about the "$$"
> construct (and IMHO it makes the source much more readable, and marking
> the address as a literal looks good in the output, too).

I agree that the source is more readable as monospaced, but I think we need to keep the quotes around the text in git-tag(1) and probably git-fast-import(1) so that it is differentiated from the surrounding text in the man page output.

I just tried this and got strange results. Taking the example in git-tag(1):

    ...of the form ``Your Name <your@email.address>''

I tried this to preserve the quotes and make the entire quoted text monospaced (I don't think we want to have just the email address monospaced):

    ...of the form ```Your Name <your@email.address>`''

which had the desired effect - smart quotes and everything inside rendered monospaced - BUT the email address is hyperlinked!

Switching the smart Asciidoc double quotes (``...'') for "normal" double quotes ("...") produces the desired result, but IMHO doesn't look quite as good (on the other hand it looks like there are many more use of "..." than ``...'' in the Git documentation).

[While searching, the only other example I could find is in git-commit(1) where `A U Thor <author@example.com>` is rendered monospaced without quotes, but I think this hurts readability in the man page output - expect a follow-up patch if we resolve this in the direction of having quotes and monospaced text.]

At this point I've exhausted my Asciidoc knowledge and I'm not entirely happy with any of these options. Suggestions?

John