Re: [help-texinfo] \turnoffactive in TeX blocks

[Karl Berry]

    @tex
    $n'$
    @end tex
    compiles fine, but

Works fine for me too.

    @tex
    \turnoffactive
    $n'$
    @end tex

Now I understand, I think.  You're saying the calc manual explicitly has
that \turnoffactive, not that texinfo.tex does.  Before, I had
thought that texinfo.tex was doing the \turnoffactive.

If that's right, the best thing to do is certainly to remove it from the
calc manual.  If problems result, then let me know and we'll go from
there.

In general, presumably we should make the calc manual work with as
little tinkering around with internal texinfo.tex definitions as
possible.  I don't doubt that some will be needed given the extreme
math-intensive nature of calc, but let's try to reduce it if we can.

    My question, I suppose, is why neither "'" nor "\rq"
    work in this situation, 

Because that's exactly what \markupsetuprqdefault is designed to do, set
up the meaning of ' chars.  It shouldn't be called at all inside @tex.

    and what advantages there might be using
    "\turnoffactive" in a TeX block.

I can only surmise it was needed to work around some other bug in @tex,
many moons ago.  I don't recall ever seeing any discussion about it from
Dave Gillespie or any other calc folks.

Thanks,
Karl