Re: @value, macro and other expansion questions

[Patrice Dumas]

On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 04:52:27PM -0500, Karl Berry wrote:
> 
> In normal code_style, multiple spaces/tabs/newlines all get replaced by
> a single space (a la TeX), for the sake of @xref{Some Node Name Broken
> Over Lines}.

I don't think this is needed for all code_style cases, only for node
names? At least it is what I do in texi2html. To be more precise I
normalise spaces for nodes each time it is like a node name (@anchor, 
@float arguments, maybe others). I also normalize spaces in a whole 
@*ref because it seems to be what makeinfo does and it makes some sense,
one doesn not expect titles to span lines. But I don't think that 
normalizing spaces in all the code_style situations is right. In 
the general case in the output formatting (in html, in xml) spaces 
are not kept as is anyway, but in info I think that spaces shoube 
kept as is. Testing it, it seems to me that it is what makeinfo does?

> But for filenames (and @verb and @verbatim and ?), it seems we need
> verb_style, where all whitespace is preserved precisely as-is.

Agreed. And for filenames that are used to find a file in the
filesystem, like @include, @verbatiminclude, @image first and last arg
the characters that are special for a given output format should not be
treated specially when searching for the file. So a file like
@include ".texi
should really be ".texi even if in html it becomes ".

There is a non obvious case, however, which is the case of spaces in
front or at the end of a command. For example if there is

@image{ file }

Should it be `file' or ` file '? I'd tend to favor `file' and the user
can use @verb to have spaces. That would make @verb another acceptable
@-command in file names, with the same meaning than in main ouput.

--
Pat