Re: Encoding non-alphanumeric characters in manpage filenames

[Matthew Mondor <mm_lists%pulsar-zone.net@localhost>]

On Fri, 5 Nov 2021 23:50:38 +0200
Lassi Kortela <lassi%lassi.io@localhost> wrote:

> * URL encoding (using a "%" character before the digits).

I'm not sure if this was a possible consideration or if it would work
for your purposes, but apropos/-k has a database created using
makemandb(8) and it would theoretically be possible for such a database
to hold names that don't necessarily correspond to the filenames, that
it could index, search, display, and man(1) could presumably also use it
(-k already does)...  If depending on the directory tree representation
itself is not a requirement.  It would even be possible for a custom
system to index in an sqlite database and for a web frontend to use SQL
queries, including to obtain the actual fullpath to a page (that could
be anything, even a PostgreSQL-style directory-sorted serial number for
fast access), etc.

My second comment may not suit for your use case, but a precedent
exists for virtual file systems that embed more information than the
native file system allows, an example being umsdos (of course, without
special software the OS would remain oblivious to such, but all
native filenames would respect the limitations).

-- 
Matt