Re: INFO on add-ons

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>]

>>>>> "Robert" == Robert J Chassell <bob@rattlesnake.com> writes:

    Robert> Currently you can run `texinfo-show-structure', but it
    Robert> does not work well with Outline mode.  Would a combination
    Robert> do the job for you?

No.  First, I want to use third-party tools.  XML tools are growing
like a bamboo garden.  Texinfo is at best a mature bonsai by
comparison.  Second, AFAICT texinfo doesn't care about the textual
structure of a texi document.

@node a, b, , top
@menu
* c
* d
@end menu
@node c, d, , a
@node d, , c, a
@node b, , a, top

and

@node a, b, , top
@menu
* c
* d
@end menu
@node b, , a, top        <-- Node b jumps 2 places to Number Two on
                             the Billboard Node Charts!  Number Two,
                             Two, Two....
@node c, d, , a
@node d, , c, a

are identical structures from the point of view of Texinfo.  This
means that the processor must know the semantics of the name, next,
previous, and up attributes of a node to deduce what any XML processor
"just knows".

That means that every function I use must contain special code that
knows about @node.  Of course this is do-able, but why spend the
effort when every DOM processor already knows how to manipulate these
hierarchical structures?  Furthermore, in general the structure of SAX
parsers will give you the same result implicitly.  (An actual
structure editor would want DOM, of course.)

Once again, not everybody needs this.  I'm just explaining why I want
this, and I don't know whether it would be worth converting to XML
globally for Emacs or GNU.

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
 My nostalgia for Icon makes me forget about any of the bad things.  I don't
have much nostalgia for Perl, so its faults I remember.  Scott Gilbert c.l.py