At 2026-05-29T05:05:57-0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> I recently stumbled across this commit:
> diff --git a/man/chmod.x b/man/chmod.x
> index 39749f0bf..4a20c5b43 100644
> --- a/man/chmod.x
> +++ b/man/chmod.x
> @@ -49,7 +49,9 @@ users who are members of the file's group (\fBg\fP),
>  and the permissions granted to users that are in neither of the two preceding
>  categories (\fBo\fP).
>  .PP
> -A numeric mode is from one to four octal digits (0\-7), derived by
> +.ds cU https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node
> +A \X'tty: link \*(cU/Numeric-Modes.html'\fBnumeric mode\fP\X'tty: link'
> +is from one to four octal digits (0\-7), derived by
>  adding up the bits with values 4, 2, and 1.  Omitted digits are
>  assumed to be leading zeros.
>  The first digit selects the set user ID (4) and set group ID (2) and

At 2026-05-31T05:58:50-0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> At 2026-05-31T11:29:18+0100, Pádraig Brady wrote:
> > On 31/05/2026 09:53, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> > > An ugly URL formatted as text is often better than a URL that has
> > > disappeared without a trace.
> > 
> > Yes that's the key point.  In our case we don't care if the URL
> > disappears without a trace.  That's the graceful degradation mode we
> > want, as showing the URL will make things unreadable.
> 
> Okay.  That's an unusual but defensible use case.  In your case, the
> URL is "gravy".
> 
> > We'd definitely use .UR if the defaults were as they are now, so we'll
> > probably change to them in future.
> 
> Understood.

Here's how I'd probably solve this problem if I were in your shoes.

You asked earlier if I could teach grohtml(1) to interpret `\X'tty:
link'` device extension command escape sequences.  I think I _could_,
but it wouldn't be the best design.  (If we wanted this, a better
approach would be to generalize a cross-device extension command and
allocate it within the informally managed "tag" name space.  For
instance, `\X'groff: link'`.)

But I think there's a higher-level solution to your problem, and one
that more clearly preserves the logic you're trying to express, which is
that you want hyperlinks on devices that support them _except_ for
terminals.

I would therefore solve the problem with page-local macros.

Thus, after your page calls `TH` to initialize (and select, when the
`-mandoc` wrapper is in use) the macro package, I'd add a macro pair of
macro definitions wrapping `UR` and `UE`.

I'm attaching a demonstration.  It works as I expect with groff options
"-T html", "-T pdf", and "-T utf8".

Let me know if this helps, or doesn't.

Regards,
Branden

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