From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: karl@freefriends.org (Karl Berry) Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Refilling overrides texinfo commands Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 18:44:02 -0400 Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Message-ID: <200306262244.h5QMi2M13224@f7.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1056667755 11026 80.91.224.249 (26 Jun 2003 22:49:15 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 22:49:15 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Fri Jun 27 00:49:13 2003 Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19VfXG-0002mJ-00 for ; Fri, 27 Jun 2003 00:48:10 +0200 Original-Received: from monty-python.gnu.org ([199.232.76.173]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 19Vfbz-0008EG-00 for ; Fri, 27 Jun 2003 00:53:03 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.20) id 19VfWg-000238-9e for emacs-devel@quimby.gnus.org; Thu, 26 Jun 2003 18:47:34 -0400 Original-Received: from list by monty-python.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.20) id 19VfUg-0001CN-2U for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 26 Jun 2003 18:45:30 -0400 Original-Received: from mail by monty-python.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.20) id 19VfUD-0000wa-HF for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 26 Jun 2003 18:45:04 -0400 Original-Received: from consort.superb.net ([209.61.216.22] helo=f7.net) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.20) id 19VfTI-0000LZ-PT; Thu, 26 Jun 2003 18:44:04 -0400 Original-Received: (from karl@localhost) by f7.net (8.11.7/8.11.7) id h5QMi2M13224; Thu, 26 Jun 2003 18:44:02 -0400 Original-To: storm@cua.dk Original-cc: rms@gnu.org Original-cc: teirllm@dms.auburn.edu X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1b5 Precedence: list List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Archive: List-Unsubscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:15284 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:15284 > 1. Change the standalone info to hide the same text as Emacs info does. > 2. Change Makeinfo to recognize when filling that that text will be > hidden. I suppose, although one of the whole purposes of Info format was to make as simple to display as possible. If any info reader now has to magically know which text to hide, that makes the format that much less transparent. Also, this will be the first time regular paragraphs will be treated differently in Info and in plain text. I guess that's not exactly a problem, but it seems somewhat strange. Finally, and most importantly, isn't the whole hiding feature optional? In that case, if the user turns off hiding, they will have lines that are too long. What then? They lose because they want to use Info as originally designed? Doesn't seem right. Likewise, old info readers won't know they're now supposed to hide text, so their display of new info files will be suboptimal, although still usable. Thinking more generally, it seems to me that a number of these new Emacs Info features, including this one, are trying to intuit document structure/information out of the plain text output, and that way lies madness. For example, what if next month someone decides they want to display code fragments in a monospaced font and regular text in a variable-width font? (Heck, for all I know, maybe you already put in other magic variables to try to do that.) Or, what if someone resizes their window to be wider or narrower, wouldn't it be nice if Emacs refilled all the text to the new window size? I'm sure we could dream up many other features along these lines, based on analogous features in web browsers. These are very reasonable things to want to do, but Info format just was never designed to support any of this stuff, and grafting it on now seems wrong to me. As I said before, parsing the XML or docbook output from makeinfo seems like a much more viable approach, since those formats preserve the document structure. (In theory, anyway, I'm sure the implementation is not 100% correct at present.) And, following that path, we might as well abandon the original Info format entirely, instead of trying to add this or that feature to it. We could leave Emacs Info and standalone Info basically alone, and implement fancy new features in some new Emacs module that isn't hampered by compatibility constraints. One thing that would help is if the people who are working on these new features could give a brief summary of where they want Info to go. Kim, anyone? That way, we (I) won't be surprised after the fact when it turns out makeinfo or standalone info need changes, etc. Sorry this is so long. k