Re: @smallbook and friends

[Karl Berry]

    Call it @sizedexample, and it takes one argument: the number of
    characters that should fit on a line.  Texinfo then tries to select
    a size of fixed-width font that gives at least that many characters
    per line.

I was thinking about this sort of approach too, but the problem I had
was that you wouldn't want one example to be 9pt, the next 8pt, the next
10pt, etc., just because the current text for the example happen to be
different widths.  Would you?  On the other hand, I guess if users say
@sizedexample 72, @sizedexample 61, @sizedexample 32, then they deserve
what they get.

Or alternatively, if you lie about the example width and just say "80"
or "60" because you "know" what size you want, you're creating a
maintenance problem because one day the text will change.

(Actually, users would want Texinfo to compute that number for them ...)

On the other hand, if someone wants to say "this example is 97 chars
wide and I want it to fit no matter how tiny you have to make the font",
then it would work for that.

I'm just not sure about the usefulness of the extra generality of
allowing any number at all there.  What are the rules?  Never smaller
than 5pt (say) and never larger than the text size, I guess.

Hmm.

Thanks,
karl