Re: Paragraph indentation suppression

[Simon Law]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 08:36:43AM +0200, Stepan Kasal wrote:
> 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:

        Really?  I have always considered DocBook to be a more painful
Texinfo system.  (Much like I see XSL-FO as a more painful LaTeX.)  I
guess I'm just old-fashioned that way.

> The default should have either \parindent or \parskip, but not both.
> 
> What do you think?

        I think it is fine.  TeX output has a small \parskip, but we
can't adjust that in info.  It could be that people will start writing:

@ifinfo
@paragraphindent none
@end ifinfo

to achieve block style indentation.  But I think that consistency
between TeX and info outputs is very important.  In fact, I have a great
urge to bring the HTML output into the 21st century, and make perform
similarly as well.

> >     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.

        Well, not _my_ tradition.  In my tradition, we right from top to
bottom, right column to left.  But that doesn't seem to be within
Texinfo's abilities right now.

> 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.

        No need to fight.  If you are already writing a foreign
language, just use '@firstparagraphindent insert' since there is no need
to change it.

> 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.

        Hmm.  I think that when we do internationalisation, this will be
something to consider.  Perhaps you will even write the code for it!

Simon