man.endnotes.list.enabled — Display endnotes list at end of man page?
If the value of man.endnotes.list.enabled is
non-zero (the default), then an endnotes list is added to the end of
the output man page.
If the value of man.endnotes.list.enabled is
zero, the list is suppressed — unless link numbering is enabled (that
is, if man.endnotes.are.numbered is non-zero), in
which case, that setting overrides the
man.endnotes.list.enabled setting, and the
endnotes list is still displayed. The reason is that inline
numbering of notesources associated with endnotes only makes sense
if a (numbered) list of endnotes is also generated.
Leaving
man.endnotes.list.enabled at its default
(non-zero) value ensures that no “out of line” information (such
as the URLs for hyperlinks and images) gets lost in your
man-page output. It just gets “rearranged”.
So if you’re thinking about disabling endnotes listing by
setting the value of
man.endnotes.list.enabled to zero:
Before you do so, first take some time to carefully consider
the information needs and experiences of your users. The “out
of line” information has value even if the presentation of it
in text output is not as interactive as it may be in other
output formats.
As far as the specific case of URLs: Even though the URLs displayed in text output may not be “real” (clickable) hyperlinks, many X terminals have convenience features for recognizing URLs and can, for example, present users with an options to open a URL in a browser with the user clicks on the URL is a terminal window. And short of those, users with X terminals can always manually cut and paste the URLs into a web browser.
Also, note that various “man to html” tools, such as the
widely used man2html (VH-Man2html)
application, automatically mark up URLs with a@href markup
during conversion — resulting in “real” hyperlinks in HTML
output from those tools.
To “turn off” numbering of endnotes in the
endnotes list, set man.endnotes.are.numbered
to zero. The endnotes list will
still be displayed; it will just be displayed without the
numbers[6]
The default heading for the endnotes list is
NOTES. To change that, set a non-empty
value for the man.endnotes.list.heading
parameter.
In the case of notesources that are links: Along with the URL for each link, the endnotes list includes the contents of the link. The list thus includes only non-empty[7] links. Empty links are never included, and never numbered. They are simply displayed inline, without any numbering.
In addition, if there are multiple instances of links in a
refentry that have the same URL, the URL is listed only
once. The contents listed for that link in the endnotes list are
the contents of the first link which has that URL.
If you disable endnotes listing, you should probably also set
man.links.are.underlined to zero (to disable
link underlining).
[6] It can still make sense to have the list of endnotes displayed even if you have endnotes numbering turned off. In that case, your endnotes list basically becomes a “list of references” without any association with specific text in your document. This is probably the best option if you find the inline endnotes numbering obtrusive. Your users will still have access to all the “out of line” such as URLs for hyperlinks.
[7] A “non-empty” link is one that looks like this:
<ulink url="http://snapshots.docbook.org/xsl/doc/manpages/">manpages</ulink>
an “empty link” is on that looks like this:
<ulink url="http://snapshots.docbook.org/xsl/doc/manpages/"/>