Texinfo markup in package blurbs

Texinfo markup in package blurbs

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello!

Guix has gained the possibility to have Texinfo markup in package
descriptions¹, which is properly rendered by user interfaces and at
<https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/packages/>.  Often we just limit
ourselves to ornaments such as @dfn, @code, or @uref.

Perhaps we could consider using it in pkgblurbs.txt if the needed for
enriched text arises?

Thanks,
Ludo’.

¹ http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Synopses-and-Descriptions.html

Re: [bug-womb] Texinfo markup in package blurbs

[Brandon Invergo]

Hi Ludovic,

> Guix has gained the possibility to have Texinfo markup in package
> descriptions¹, which is properly rendered by user interfaces and at
> <https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/packages/>.  Often we just limit
> ourselves to ornaments such as @dfn, @code, or @uref.
> 
> Perhaps we could consider using it in pkgblurbs.txt if the needed for
> enriched text arises?

pkgblurbs.txt is also used in GSRC and for generating
https://gnu.org/manual/blurbs.html and the "featured package" blurb on
the gnu.org front page.  So with Make, we would have to strip the markup
while for the web we would have to convert it to HTML.  I guess we could
do an intermediate solution, like some m4 macros, to output the desired
format for each target, but that might be a bit over-engineered.  Ideas?

A more pertinent question: are there any blurbs in particular that you
think should have some text marked up?

-brandon

Re: [bug-womb] Texinfo markup in package blurbs

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hey Brandon,

Brandon Invergo <brandon@invergo.net> skribis:

>> Guix has gained the possibility to have Texinfo markup in package
>> descriptions¹, which is properly rendered by user interfaces and at
>> <https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/packages/>.  Often we just limit
>> ourselves to ornaments such as @dfn, @code, or @uref.
>> 
>> Perhaps we could consider using it in pkgblurbs.txt if the needed for
>> enriched text arises?
>
> pkgblurbs.txt is also used in GSRC and for generating
> https://gnu.org/manual/blurbs.html and the "featured package" blurb on
> the gnu.org front page.  So with Make, we would have to strip the markup
> while for the web we would have to convert it to HTML.  I guess we could
> do an intermediate solution, like some m4 macros, to output the desired
> format for each target, but that might be a bit over-engineered.  Ideas?

ISTR that Karl had implemented a script that converts sequences like:

  `[^ ]+'

to:

  <code>\1</code>

for the HTML output.

You could do something like that for “@code{foo}”.  However, that
wouldn’t scale well to other tags.

So I would suggest using Guile as well, along the lines of:

  http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/guix/ui.scm#n816

and with ‘recutils->alist’ to extract the text from pkgblurbs.txt:

  http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/guix/records.scm#n328

Now, I would understand if you think this is going too far in the Guile
direction, however pleasing that may be.  ;-)

> A more pertinent question: are there any blurbs in particular that you
> think should have some text marked up?

No, no particular example in mind, rather forward-looking.  I guess
those that use the `foo' sequences could be changed to @code{foo} to
begin with.

Cheers,
Ludo’.