Re: Patch updating Info format specification

[Karl Berry]

    Subject: Patch updating Info format specification

Thanks.  Only two months later ... sorry.

(Patrice, for your possible convenience:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/texinfo-devel/2014-05/msg00026.html
and please see my query at the end of this msg)

    * Whether terminating punctuation ("." or ",") is required for
    quoted nodenames

I don't see why it should have to be, although of course normally it
would be.

    * When to use "*Note" or "*note"

I think what you say, namely N at the beginning of a sentence and n
otherwise, is fine, since that's what I see happening now in makeinfo's
output.

Clearly N vs. n is not something that is part of the spec, just a hint
for usage where possible.  We can't be in the business of guaranteeing
perfect detection of sentence endings.

    * Whether the tag table is optional in non-split files

With makeinfo 4.13 and current makeinfo, the tag table is always
generated, so far as I can see.  So I think we could make it required if
that's beneficial to you for reading.

    * Use of "(dir)" in node information lines

What about it?

    * Use of non-ASCII characters in node names

Oh, I fully agree with you.  Unnecessarily using literal Unicode
characters anywhere in a document, but most especially in node names, is
just asking for trouble.  (Not that I have any expectation that such a
recommendation will carry any weight with the UTF-8 crowd.)

Anyway, the changes in general seem fine to me.  Just a couple of minor
things struck me.  First, about concatenation of subfiles:

  -The first node written to @file{gdb.info-2} would start at byte 295733
  -if the subsequent @file{gdb.info-*} files (not including
  address@hidden files were appended to @file{gdb.info-1}, including
  -their preambles.
  
  +The first node in the @file{gdb.info-2} subfile would start at byte 295733
  +if @file{gdb.info-2} were appended to @file{gdb.info-1}.

I guess my original text was not the best, but the new text does not
make it clear that these byte positions are supposed to include the file
preambles.  To the best of my recollection that's what we decided,
anyway.

Second, about "hiding" of text:

  ... That final punctuation is part of the surrounding sentence, and
  +should be displayed.  (It may be hidden in some circumstances, namely if
  address@hidden was used and the cross-reference is contained within
  +parentheses.  @address@hidden@@pxref}}.)

First, I don't think we should recommend that Info text be hidden under
any circumstances; I'm not even enthused about saying about when it is
vaguely acceptable as optional behavior.  (I know Emacs randomly
reparses and redisplays Info files by default, but I think that is
simply wrong.  I can't change what they do, but I don't want to
officially bless it.)  So my preference would be to delete this bit.

Second, the text as written looks contradictory to me.  It says the
final punctuation should be (a) displayed, but at the same time (b)
hidden under some circumstances.


Finally, Patrice: in terms of putting this into makeinfo, I would
suggest that there be a config variable to enable it, so that people who
want to try it, can.  Such as Info implementors.  It would be disabled
by default for at least the next release, perhaps longer.

If/Once the changes look good to us, then I think the next step would be
to bring it up on emacs-devel (before making any official release) and
be sure they are ok with implementing it in Emacs.

Thanks,
Karl