@documentencoding, `makeinfo --enable-encoding' and texi2dvi (was: An accented i)

[Reiner Steib]

On Thu, Oct 31 2002, Karl Eichwalder wrote:

[ Sorry for the late response.  I have just found this thread
searching for `documentencoding'. ]

> address@hidden (Karl Berry) writes:
>
>> For now, probably the best solution is to run a script to fix up either
>> the tex output or the html output (or just live with it).  Probably
>> hacking the html output would be easier.
>>
>> Perhaps someone else on the list has a better suggestion.
>
> I'm using 8-bit characters in German Texinfo texts; works good with
> makeinfo.  

I assume you only use `german umlaut' characters (ÄÖÜäöüß).  Most of
them are on the same position in some iso-8859 character sets, but not
all.  E.g. `Ä' (A diaeresis) isn't in iso-8859-7 (GREEK CAPITAL LETTER
DELTA).

What if the reader has his locale set to iso-8859-7?  Will he see
"Δnderung" when you wrote "Änderung"?  *time passes* yes[1]. :-(

What is the best method to enforce Emacs' info mode to use a specific
coding for a specific *.info file?  Hm, local variables, probably.

Does it make sense to include the following immediately before @bye:

@ifinfo
@example
Local Variables:
coding: iso-latin-1
End:
@end example
@end ifinfo

It seems to work, but I'm not sure if this is a good solution.

> When I want to produce a printed copy using TeX, I run the .texi
> file through recode first:
>
>     recode latin1..texi <file.texi >file7.texi

A different workaround would be to use:

@tex
\input latin1.tex
@end tex
@c With latin1.tex e.g. from
@c http://openbsd.secsup.org/src/kerberosV/src/doc/latin1.tex

OTOH, @"A, ..., @"u, @ss{} seem to work fine with both, `makeinfo
--enable-encoding' and texi2dvi.

What is the recommended way to deal with this?

BTW, --enable-encoding isn't mentioned in the texinfo manual (Edition
4.0 of the Texinfo manual, updated 28 September 1999).  I guess it
should go to "(texinfo)makeinfo options" and a cross reference in
"(texinfo)Inserting Accents" would be useful.

Bye, Reiner.

[1] Using sample document [2]:

$ makeinfo --version
makeinfo (GNU texinfo) 4.4

$ makeinfo --enable-encoding tst.texi
$ emacs -q -no-site-file --eval '(set-language-environment "Greek")' \
  --eval "(require 'info)" \
  --eval '(Info-find-node (concat default-directory "tst.info") "Top")'

[2] Sample document (tst.texi):

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
\input texinfo   @c -*-texinfo-*-
@c %**start of header
@documentlanguage de
@documentencoding ISO-8859-1
@c %**end of header

@node Top, , (dir), (dir)
A diaeresis: -@"A-, direct: -Ä-;
o diaeresis: -@"o-, direct: -ö-;
@bye
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo--- PGP key available via WWW   http://rsteib.home.pages.de/