man.links.are.underlined — Underline links?
If the value of man.links.are.underlined
is non-zero (the default), then the contents of links are rendered
with an underline.
If the value of man.links.are.underlined
is zero, links are displayed without any underlining.
Currently, this parameter only affects output for
ulinks.
If you set man.links.are.numbered and/or
man.links.list.enabled to zero (disabled), then
you should probably also set
man.links.are.underlined to zero. But if
man.links.are.numbered is non-zero (enabled),
you should probably set a non-zero value for
man.links.are.underlined also[3].
[3] If the main purpose of underlining of links in most output formats it to indicate that the underlined text is “clickable”, given that links rendered in man pages are not “real” hyperlinks that users can click on, it might seem like there is never a good reason to have link contents underlined in man output.
In fact, if you suppress the
display of inline link references (by setting
man.links.are.numbered to zero), there is no
good reason to have links underlined. However, if
man.links.are.numbered is non-zero, having
links underlined may (arguably) serve a purpose: It provides
“context” information about exactly what part of the text
is being “annotated” by the link. Depending on how you
use mark up your content, that context information may or may not have
value.