bug-texinfo
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Display of cross references to other manuals


From: Eli Zaretskii
Subject: Re: Display of cross references to other manuals
Date: 14 Mar 2004 07:51:14 +0200

> Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 18:13:35 -0600 (CST)
> From: Luc Teirlinck <address@hidden>
> 
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
>    If we decide that theses xrefs need work, it's IMHO entirely
>    appropriate to manually change them.
> 
> I believe you vastly underestimate the number of such references that
> are out there.

I don't.  I just think we shouldn't be afraid of doing that, even if
it's a vast job.  Unless we think the problem is not important, that
is.

> It would take an eternity to get just five percent of them manually
> changed.

"Even a thousand-mile journey begins with a single step."

> Manually changing a tiny fraction of xrefs, say to explicitly
> mention the manual in the second argument, would produce stylistic
> inconsistency

What inconsistency?

> and would hamper efforts to produce a solid automated solution.

If you are talking about the XML reader (the only automated solution
I'd consider as sufficient), then I don't see how it would be
hampered.

>     I'd write
> 
>       (@xref{Narrowing commands in Emacs, Narrowing, , emacs, The GNU
>       Emacs Manual}, for more information about the narrowing commands.)
> [...]
> It does not indicate that this is a reference to the Emacs _manual_.

It doesn't need to.  This thread started when Richard said that "See
Overview" looks bad.  I'd say the same about "See Narrowing".  All I
wanted to achieve is a less awkward text, that's all; if the user
doesn't understand that the xref leads to another manual, so be it.

> There should be no need to point out a third time in the second
> argument that this is a reference to the Emacs manual.

The Texinfo language doesn't leave us a choice, I'm afraid: it doesn't
specify any dependencies between the arguments.

> Of course an output format implementation is not going to print the
> xref as such, but it should convey all relevant information in the
> final output.  texi2dvi does this and makeinfo does this.  The only
> problem is that Emacs Info with Info-hide-note-references set to t
> hides the information that makeinfo is trying to convey to the user.

I believe we already talked about turning off Info-hide-note-references
by default.  Was that done?  (I cannot check where I'm typing this.)





reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]