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: terminal escapes in Info files? Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:26:10 -0500 Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Message-ID: <200310280126.h9S1Q9N16202@f7.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: deer.gmane.org X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1067304820 16036 80.91.224.253 (28 Oct 2003 01:33:40 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 01:33:40 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org, rms@gnu.org, dirt@gtk.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Tue Oct 28 02:33:37 2003 Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by deer.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1AEIjp-0003HE-00 for ; Tue, 28 Oct 2003 02:33:37 +0100 Original-Received: from monty-python.gnu.org ([199.232.76.173]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1AEIjp-0006Dc-00 for ; Tue, 28 Oct 2003 02:33:37 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.24) id 1AEIji-0000x2-KS for emacs-devel@quimby.gnus.org; Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:33:30 -0500 Original-Received: from list by monty-python.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.24) id 1AEIgx-00061k-Fv for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:30:39 -0500 Original-Received: from mail by monty-python.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.24) id 1AEIet-00052c-RE for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:29:04 -0500 Original-Received: from [209.61.216.22] (helo=f7.net) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.24) id 1AEIeH-0004gC-Cb; Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:27:53 -0500 Original-Received: (from karl@localhost) by f7.net (8.11.7-20030920/8.11.7) id h9S1Q9N16202; Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:26:10 -0500 Original-To: eliz@elta.co.il X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.2 Precedence: list List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:17482 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:17482 > if we want to add font markup to info fmt, let's not use something as > ugly as terminal escape squences. please design something clean! Since Info is inherently limited to what can be displayed on a terminal, it seems like ANSI escape sequences are as reasonable specification of the capabilities as anything else? Easy to implement, too. Admittedly the ESC [ blah blah sequences are ugly, though. How about using what Enriched-Text mode uses in Emacs? See etc/enriched.doc in the Emacs distro. That is indeed a lot cleaner (also quite a bit more verbose :). Thanks for mentioning it, I wasn't aware of it. It seems using this would imply a new non-backward-compatible output format, though, since every literal < needs to be escaped in enriched format, and existing info readers don't know how to do that. Using the ugly terminal escape sequences, on the other hand, is backward-compatible because I'm sure that no real document has literal terminal escape sequences (Texinfo hasn't had @ctrl for years ...). Hmm. As always, it seems there is no easy answer. Thanks, k