Info: Why is "note" hidden by "see"?

Info: Why is "note" hidden by "see"?

[Lennart Borgman]

(Sorry for making a new thread, i have deleted the old messages about this
issue.)

Maybe this is not the time to ask, but I simply do not understand why an
overlay is used in the Info buffer to hide "note" and display "see". Why
can't the text in the buffer be changed instead? Would not that be better
for the search functions? Or does that give some new problems? Is the actual
text in Info buffer important in some way?

Re: Info: Why is "note" hidden by "see"?

[David Kastrup]

"Lennart Borgman" <lennart.borgman.073@student.lu.se> writes:

> (Sorry for making a new thread, i have deleted the old messages about this
> issue.)
>
> Maybe this is not the time to ask, but I simply do not understand
> why an overlay is used in the Info buffer to hide "note" and display
> "see". Why can't the text in the buffer be changed instead? Would
> not that be better for the search functions? Or does that give some
> new problems? Is the actual text in Info buffer important in some
> way?

Seconded.  The proposed "solutions" to this problem break a lot of
other things and gloss over the simple fact that the text should be
changed in the buffer, really.

The only reason I can imagine not to do so would be if info buffer
positions were stored somewhere as integers.  But then one should
rather fix that instead of breaking every other package.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: Info: Why is "note" hidden by "see"?

[Juri Linkov]

"Lennart Borgman" <lennart.borgman.073@student.lu.se> writes:
> Maybe this is not the time to ask, but I simply do not understand why an
> overlay is used in the Info buffer to hide "note" and display "see". Why
> can't the text in the buffer be changed instead? Would not that be better
> for the search functions? Or does that give some new problems? Is the actual
> text in Info buffer important in some way?

"*note" text in Info buffer is important since Info uses it to find
cross references.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/

Re: Info: Why is "note" hidden by "see"?

[David Kastrup]

Juri Linkov <juri@jurta.org> writes:

> "Lennart Borgman" <lennart.borgman.073@student.lu.se> writes:

>> Maybe this is not the time to ask, but I simply do not understand
>> why an overlay is used in the Info buffer to hide "note" and
>> display "see". Why can't the text in the buffer be changed instead?
>> Would not that be better for the search functions? Or does that
>> give some new problems? Is the actual text in Info buffer important
>> in some way?
>
> "*note" text in Info buffer is important since Info uses it to find
> cross references.

If info formats the text and replaces "*note" with something else, it
can [expletive deleted] well equip it with some text property or
similar for finding the cross reference.  This would actually speed up
the cross reference finding.  No need to foul up search for other
modes.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: Info: Why is "note" hidden by "see"?

[Miles Bader]

On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 23:19:42 +0100, David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
> If info formats the text and replaces "*note" with something else, it
> can [expletive deleted] well equip it with some text property or
> similar for finding the cross reference.  This would actually speed up
> the cross reference finding.  No need to foul up search for other
> modes.

This is certainly an "after release" thing, but FWIW, I definitely
agree.  Display properties are simply not handled well enough by Emacs
to ever be completely satisfactory in the way they are used in info
(despite Kim's heroic efforts to make things work).

I think simply rewriting the actual text in the buffer would be a big
improvement, and doing so would likely simplify and clean-up the info
code as well.

The current code is good enough for the release, despite its warts,
but this seems a nice project for afterwards.

-Miles
-- 
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.