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Re: (q.v.) in the emacs manual
From: |
Gavin Smith |
Subject: |
Re: (q.v.) in the emacs manual |
Date: |
Sun, 12 Jan 2020 11:01:13 +0000 |
User-agent: |
Mutt/1.9.4 (2018-02-28) |
On Sun, Jan 12, 2020 at 01:54:52PM +0900, Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
> The glossary in the emacs manual has lots of (q.v.) to "refer" to other items
> in the glossary. Such references are not handled as hypertext links. They are
> just plain strings that require the user to manually search for the
> corresponding term.
>
> Considering that texinfo only has 3 types of cross references and that none
> of them fits the requirements of "q.v." (i.e., just a link, no "strings"
> attached, no page number added, etc.) my idea is that the manual authors
> simply preferred to resort to this visual reference (just write "q.v.") and
> let the user find the reference manually rather than trying to create a
> solution in texinfo.
>
> I found 2 q.v. in the Elisp Reference, 134 in the Emacs manual.
>
> I tried using @ref and here is what I get:
There isn't any way to get what you want with a simple use of an
existing Texinfo command. The difficulty is creating a functional
cross-reference in all of the output formats.
> PDF:
> Aborting means getting out of a [recursive editing], page 592.
>
> I get the extra ", page 592" where I'd just be happy with "[recursive
> editing]" or even "recursive editing (q.v.)".
The "page 592" is for if the manual is printed. I'm not sure about
adding "(q.v.)" automatically.
> HTML:
> Aborting means getting out of a recursive edit.
>
> Where "recursive edit" is a link to the anchor I added to "Recursive Editing
> Level". The HTML output is perfect.
>
> terminal INFO:
> Aborting means getting out of a *note recursive edit: recursive
> editing.
>
> I don't need the "*note" and the ":recursive editing". The link is sufficient.
The extra text is needed to mark it as a link in the info format.
> GUI Emacs INFO:
> Aborting means getting out of a see recursive edit
> .
>
> I don't need the "see" and it looks like there is an extra space before the
> period.
It's not reliable for Emacs to add a "see" before the link.
>
> "quod vide" is "used to direct a reader to another part of a book or article
> for further information." (Oxford Dictionary of English). It seems perfectly
> relevant to have such parts handled as short links in Texinfo.
>
> I've been looking at the texinfo.tex file to see if I could do something
> there. Is that the right place to do that ?
If you were to implement a new Texinfo command it would be in
texinfo.tex as well as in texi2any. I'd suggest doing something with
Texinfo conditionals and macros to define a macro differently for
different output formats, e.g.
@iftex
@macro plainref{ref}
\ref\
@end macro
@end iftex
and so on.