Re: annoying warnings with makeinfo 4.0d

[Eli Zaretskii]

On Mon, 31 Dec 2001, Werner LEMBERG wrote:

> >   /* It's easy to write @defun foo(arg1 arg2), but this is misparsed by
> >      texinfo.tex.  Warn about it.  */
> >   if (*scan_args && **scan_args && !whitespace (**scan_args))
> >     {
> >       warning ("`%c' follows defined name `%s' instead of whitespace",
> >               **scan_args, defined_name);
> >     }
> > 
> > So my question would be: does this work in the printed version of the
> > manual?
> 
> Due to the broken macro support in texinfo.tex, I always use
> texi2dvi's `-e' option, but this produces nice output.

So perhaps the code which prints the warning is too general, and should 
be modified to check for more specific cases that break texinfo.tex.

> Sigh, groff's syntax doesn't allow whitespace in many cases.  It's a
> different world...

Yes.  And the @deffn facilities were clearly written with something 
different in mind: they _do_ assume arguments are separated by 
whitespace.

> > Since you don't use any features of @deffn, I wonder why do you need
> > it at all?  Perhaps just use @table or something, and solve the
> > warning problem as well?
> 
> I want the formatting achieved by @deffn (i.e. the line sticking out
> at the left and right in the printed DVI output); I had to write a lot
> of additional TeX macros to do that without @deffn.

Well, that's why I suggested @table: it also makes the line stick out, 
with all the rest indented to the right.

Anyway, if someone tells me what exactly breaks texinfo.tex in this case, 
I could try to suggest a change to make the warning be printed only in 
those specific cases.

> As you probably remember, about a year ago I called for a generic
> @deffn replacement, getting rid of all the specialties for Lisp and C

FWIW, I think Texinfo needs to replace @deffn with something less kludgey 
and of more regular syntax.  It could then also support languages such as 
groff better.  Perhaps when Karl rewrites makeinfo...