G'day Chris,
While I think that you probably have a valid point embedded in your post, it's vague, shows little in the way of research and contains errors.
Your post starts with a paragraph containing: "It all stemmed from the shortcut link to the FreeBSD man pages ..." — that seemed like a good place to start for background information. Unfortunately, that link (resolved to 'http://www.perlmonks.org/?node=url%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Ffreebed.org') leads to a Super Search page with no matches; I changed freebed to freebsd but got much the same (i.e. Super Search with no matches). [Note: other monks may get something other than the www.perlmonks.org (unless that was hard-coded). There's six possibilities: com, net and org with or without the www.]
Also, I don't know what you mean by "(note I didn't just link man to the man pages ;)". So, by the end of the first paragraph, not only do I have no background, I don't actually know what you're talking about.
In your next paragraph, you show a URL as code: "http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=43037". Not only have you hard-coded www.perlmonks.org, you don't actually provide a link. Your request for a change was all about "What shortcuts can I use for linking to other information?" and a link to that page should have been provided. I marked up that link as '[43037|What shortcuts can I use for linking to other information?]'. Follow that link to find others ways to do this. Then read further down to:
All Links Within PerlMonks Should Be Relative
... do not include the http://www.perlmonks.org part!
Now onto the main issue.
If you use this markup ([man://]), you get this link (UNIX Man Pages), which leads to 'http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi'. This is the "Search form" mentioned in the current documentation. Here you'll find a drop-down list with dozens (possibly hundreds - I didn't count them) of *nix flavours and versions (the current default being: "FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE").
You could type in ls and Submit, which would give you 'http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ls&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+9.2-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html'; or, you could change the default to, say, "SuSE Linux/i386 11.3" and get 'http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ls&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=SuSE+Linux%2Fi386+11.3&arch=default&format=html'.
If you use this markup ([man://ls]), you get this link (ls), which leads to 'http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ls&manpath=SuSE+Linux/i386+11.3'. While there are minor differences in the query string, this is basically the same page you get with "SuSE Linux/i386 11.3" (as shown in the last paragraph).
I think your request boils down to one or more of the following.
My guess (and I stress guess) is that the first of those is easy to do, may well be received favourably, and could happen in a short time span; the second and third require more work, would need a consensus which might be difficult to agree upon, and may not happen soon; the last — well, I wouldn't hold my breath.
While I'd consider your eagerness to highlight (at least what you consider to be) issues is probably a good thing; you do need to do some research and present a well thought out plan rather than, what appears to be, a knee-jerk reaction to a CB discussion (or wherever your "shoot out with marto" occurred [something else not documented in your post]).
Finally, please [ preview ], multiple times if necessary, ensuring you've checked all links, before hitting [ create ].
-- Ken
In reply to Re: Request for an update to: What shortcuts can I use for linking to other information?
by kcott
in thread Request for an update to: What shortcuts can I use for linking to other information?
by taint
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