Re: rcirc manual

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 22:16:23 +0000 (UTC)
> From: "Robert J. Chassell" <bob@rattlesnake.com>
> 
>     @key{TAB} is typeset to show an image of a key on a keyboard.  I
>     think it is not the right markup in this case, because this manual
>     does not talk about keys, it talks about typing a TAB.
> 
> >From the Texinfo Manual:

Bob, I know what the Texinfo manual says about this issue, I just
think it's not 100% clear what it means in practice.  For example, you
could use either @kbd{M-@key{x}} or @kbd{M-x} (since `x' ``describes a
key by name''), but the Texinfo manual doesn't touch this dilemma.

Over the years, I formed a personal opinion about this, based on the
way @key typesets its argument in print, and that opinion was what I
wrote: @key is appropriate when talking about keys on the keyboard,
like in the Emacs manual chapter which explains the
Backspace/Delete/DEL issue or in the "Inserting Text" section that
explains the basics.  Everywhere else, with rare exceptions, I think
the effect of @key is not what you want; in particular @kbd{M-@key{x}}
looks ugly.

So, in the situation like the one which led to this discussion, if the
text is something like "press the TAB key", then @key{TAB} is the
right markup, but if the text says "you can use TAB for completion",
I'd use @kbd{TAB}.