Re: Changes to Texinfo DTD

[Luc Teirlinck]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

   We could as well treat this as a case of unfortunate wording in the
   ELisp manual.  The above sentence could be modified to solve the
   problem at hand:

     The GNU C library manual (@pxref{Locales,,, libc, GNU Libc Manual})
     has more information about locales and locale items.

That would look terrible in the printed manual with a double nearly
identically worded reference to the GNU Libc manual, once outside
parentheses and once inside parentheses.  The reference in its present
form seems to come out OK in the printed manual, except that maybe
"@xref{Locales,,, libc, GNU Libc Manual}," should be replaced by:
"@xref{Locales,,, libc, The GNU Libc Manual},".  I believe the latter
would look better (in the printed manual).  Anyway, Juri's patch
would solve the problem I complained about.

   I notice in passing that a reference to a manual that might not be
   installed at all, because it describes a library that is only used by
   some platforms, might not be a good idea for purely didactic reasons:
   suppose my system doesn't use glibc---how would I learn more about
   Locales without the manual being available?

How would you learn about Locales without _any_ manual being
referenced?  Of course, the user needs to be alerted that the
reference leads to another manual that may or may not be available
and, if Juri's patch gets installed, they will be.  But why deprive
users that do have the manual installed of this information because
other users do not have the manual installed?  That manual is free
software.  People who do not have it installed can install it.  It is
good to inform them that it is available.

    More generally, if the underlying C library is something other than
    glibc, I might wonder whether the discussion in the glibc manual is at
    all relevant to the treatment of locales I will see on my system.

That manual pays considerable attention to portability.  So my best
guess is that it will be relevant.

Sincerely,

Luc.