Re: Paragraph indentation suppression

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello,
        back in work, so I'll again make some comments wothout writing
a single line of code:

On Sun, Apr 20, 2003 at 10:12:25PM -0400, Simon Law wrote:
> I think we're not used to it because there's paragraph separation
> (with a blank line) as well as indentation.

I believe that this combination is a mistake.

It may be so only in Czech typographic tradition, but I see some logic
in it:  if the individual paragraphs are separated by vertical space,
you don't have to disturb the reader's eyes by paragraph indentation.

I have never noticed this as I have never considered texinfo a
typographic system: I have always considered it only a tag system.
Now, when you are targeting real book quality, I think it's time to decide:

The default should have either \parindent or \parskip, but not both.

What do you think?

>       Now that I think about it, if always suppress the first
> paragraph indentation, then the option is mostly useless as I expect
> most Texinfo documentation will prefer this feature, and not put a
> "@firstparagraphindent insert" in.

:-)  As it's the ``right'' default.  But this is true for your tradition.

Imagine that texinfo was really used to produce manuals in other
languages, in book quality.  Then one would have to fight to get
first paragraphs indented.

But I agree that the cmdline option is not necessary.  I'd prefer having
different defaults for different languages: for Czech and Slovak
languages, I'd like to have first paragraphs indented, and I'd like
to have \parskip=0.

I know I repeat myself, but anyway:
thanks for @firstparagraphindent{..}, it's a big step forward.

Have a nice day,
        Stepan Kasal