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: Info enhancements Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 11:44:22 -0500 Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Message-ID: <200312041644.hB4GiMi16974@f7.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: deer.gmane.org X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1070557761 14003 80.91.224.253 (4 Dec 2003 17:09:21 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 17:09:21 +0000 (UTC) Cc: juri@jurta.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Thu Dec 04 18:09:18 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 1ARwyc-00071x-00 for ; Thu, 04 Dec 2003 18:09:18 +0100 Original-Received: from monty-python.gnu.org ([199.232.76.173]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1ARwyc-000274-00 for ; Thu, 04 Dec 2003 18:09:18 +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 1ARxvQ-0007xF-KN for emacs-devel@quimby.gnus.org; Thu, 04 Dec 2003 13:10:04 -0500 Original-Received: from list by monty-python.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.24) id 1ARxhV-0000nZ-Ul for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 04 Dec 2003 12:55:41 -0500 Original-Received: from mail by monty-python.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.24) id 1ARxgq-00008B-Ar for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 04 Dec 2003 12:55:31 -0500 Original-Received: from [209.61.216.22] (helo=f7.net) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.24) id 1ARxXx-00051O-SV for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 04 Dec 2003 12:45:49 -0500 Original-Received: (from karl@localhost) by f7.net (8.11.7-20030920/8.11.7) id hB4GiMi16974; Thu, 4 Dec 2003 11:44:22 -0500 Original-To: bob@rattlesnake.com 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:18385 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:18385 I hope this will not break older Info readers, ... If the suggestion does not break older Info readers, then I am all for it. But I think it will break them. Karl, what do you think? As Eli said, looking at the code in info/nodes.c, it looks like it will. When we added @anchor, we broke older Info readers. The saving grace there was that only Texinfo documents using @anchor were affected (and of course there were none of those at the time, and are still relatively few). The proposed change would affect all Info documents. We have to do something compatible. In this case, I like Stefan's idea of explicitly stating "line". So my proposal is to change makeinfo to append "(line NNN)" or the equivalent to the index lines. Then the info readers can read it and do the right thing. For instance: * Writing index entries: Indexing Commands. (line 1) * xdvi: Output Formats. (line 99) It is not especially beautiful, but it is 100% compatible, and gets the job done. If there is a strong consensus that "Line 1." is preferable to "(line 1)", I don't mind. Bob, I don't believe we can put the line numbers in front of the node names. That would break existing readers. (I'm also not entirely convinced that's more readable, to me having the numbers in front of the node names is more distracting than the reverse, but that's a moot point.) I don't see the line indications have to align, but if they do, they could be right justified to column 79 with maybe four spaces for the number or something. Personally I'd just as soon not even try to align them, as in the example above. Unless there are vehement objections, I will do this for the next makeinfo release. It should be straightforward. Thanks, k