Re: images for Info

[Karl Berry]

Hi Jan,

    So, there is reason to use the ^H

I assume you meant "there is no reason".  The main reason is that I'm
paranoid and the more unusual we make the marker string, the better.  We
should use this same construct for other Info extensions.  So I'd prefer
to use address@hidden ... address@hidden over just address@hidden@] because it 
makes it that much
more unlikely to coincide with any real manual text.  That's also why I
want the brackets (or something) in there, by the way; real info manuals
can theoretically contain null bytes.

The only reason to use ^H instead of something else is that then if the
info file is cat-ted directly to a terminal or printer (people do do
these things sometimes), it might have no effect on the display.  This
is not much of a reason, granted, but I can't think of any other control
character that would be better.

Finally, I see no harm in having the ^H there.

    > 5) It think it would be nice if it were at least possible to embed the
    >    actual images in the info file, instead of having to refer to
    >    external files.  Perhaps a base64 or base95 encoding of the binary 
data?

    Hmm, I'm not going to do this, primarily because I see not much reason.

Well, the reason is that info files can then remain self-contained, to
be easier to install/copy/etc.  However, this certainly isn't a
requirement in order to be able to display images at all, so it's fine
not to do it.

    Typically, all info documentation will also be present in HTML form
    (on Debian GNU/Linux at least), so they should use the same (external)
    image files.

Or at least a copy thereof...

The Texinfo @image argument is generally a simple filename,
as you know, not an absolute path (and this is a good thing):
@image{foo}
and therefore the foo.png file is going to have to be installed in
$(infodir) in order for info to find it.  And I doubt that (m)any sites
will find it convenient to refer to an image within $(infodir) for their
web pages.

We'll have to warn users (in the manual) that they'll have to copy
the image files along with the .info* files.

Perhaps one day install-info will actually install info files, and now
any associated images, and not just muck with the dir file.  (Stephen
Gildea suggested this a number of years ago.)  Not that I'm saying you
need to implement that, Jan!

    http://lilypond.org/~jan/info-image

It looks fine to me.  My only comment is that the docstring for
split-parameter-string could be a bit more descriptive as to what the
format is of the PARAMETER-STRING's that it's splitting :).

Also, the function name should probably be something less generic, 
perhaps just Info-split-parameter-string.  There are all kinds of
parameters that could be split.

Oh, and is there something in there that replaces a quoted \" with an
actual "?  I confess that what the regexp
            "\\s *\\([^=]+\\)=\\([^\\s 
\"]+\\|\\(?:\"\\(?:[^\"]\\|[^\\\"]*\\\"\\)*\"\\)\\)"
does is not immediately apparent to me.


Thanks again for doing this work.
karl