Re: centered tables

[Eli Zaretskii]

On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, Werner LEMBERG wrote:

> > That's what I thought you get.  And that's what I'd expect: the quotes
> > aren't typeset in the fixed-width font, exactly as when the
> > surrounding text is in roman.  The quotes are typeset in the same font
> > as the surrounding text.
> 
> Sorry to say, but *I* don't expect this.  I expect _italic_
> fixed-width font.

Ah, so you want the text inside @samp to be in italics as well?  I didn't 
realize that.  (I guess you want @address@hidden to typeset "foo" in 
italic fixed font also, right?)

This sounds like a useful feature, but I think it's a new feature: my 
impression is that the current version intentionally doesn't do this.  
See below.

In any case, I think the current effect of @samp inside @i is also 
useful: by not typesetting the text inside @samp in italics, it 
preserves its visual appearance, so e.g. a name of a variable or a 
function mentioned elsewhere in the text looks the same.  So, if what
you suggest is added, there should be a way of letting the user request 
the current behavior, I think.

> > If the results look ugly, perhaps texinfo.tex should allow some
> > mini-spacing between the quotes and the body of @samp.  But I'd
> > expect TeX itself to do that: isn't this exactly a job of a
> > typesetting program?
> 
> Dear Eli, TeX does a good job, but it isn't a prophet.  The italic
> correction (`\/') must be inserted by a properly designed macro.

It is obvious that I don't know enough about TeX ;-)

> The basic question is: Should @samp be stronger than @i?

I don't know whether it was meant to be that way, but it is my 
impression  that currently Texinfo consistently behaves as if
_any_ inner markup overrides the outer ones.  For example,
@code{something @var{foo}} typesets "foo" as if @code were not
there.  In other words, texinfo.tex doesn't merge the different
typefaces that are in effect; instead, it uses the most recently 
specified one.  Perhaps that is what TeX does if you specify a
fixed-width font inside italics?