Re: Changes to Texinfo DTD

[Luc Teirlinck]

   That just means my wording should perhaps be improved further, or
   maybe we should use @ifinfo and @ifnotinfo to make the text loog good
   in both online and hard-copy version.

It would be silly (and impossible) to try to manually rewrite all
references to other manuals in all currently existing .texi files this
way, when the xrefs contain enough information for an Info reader
(actually "makeinfo --xml" reader) to rewrite these sentences
_automatically_ the way you want them rewritten, without requiring any
changes in .texi files and, hence, without any danger of messing up
any other formats.  That was exactly what I proposed in the message
you reacted too.

If you want to do that though, you can not use the Info format.  In
fact, you can not use the Info format to correctly implement a value
of t for Info-hide-note-references.  I do not believe that the main
intent of the Info format ever was to "look cool".  If I understand
correctly, the main intent was that even Info readers with minimal
capabilities should be able to handle it.  That is not very compatible
with making things look "cool", "modern", "beautiful" or whatever you
want to call it.  For me Emacs info does not need to look "cool", it
needs to be easy and efficient to use, but for other people it is
extremely important that it looks as "cool" as possible.  OK with me,
but then it needs to use another format.

If we use XML, we can not only make these and other xrefs come out the
way you want them too, we can do so while filling correctly,
respecting all @*, @w, @verb and the like.  In addition to everything
else people wanted to use XML for in this thread.

Sincerely,

Luc.