Re: Change the recommended first line? (was: texinfo should support Emacs coding specifier)

[Karl Berry]

    These lines are still useful if ...

Maybe the Texinfo "header" concept is still used with makeinfo-region,
which is presumably still usable?  Not that I've tried it in many years.

Gavin: the idea is that the stuff between **{start,end} of header are
copied to a temp file, followed by the region, and then the texinfo
formatter (texinfmt/makeinfo/whatever) is called on the temp file.

This was invented by Chassell and/or rms near the beginning of Texinfo,
when processing a huge Texinfo file (e.g., Elisp) took noticeable time,
especially with Elisp (the header stuff predates C makeinfo).
Therefore, when working on new sections of a manual, it was useful to be
able to format just that section and not the entire document every time.
(Not for purposes of the Info output, but for purposes of checking the
Texinfo syntax of what was just written.)  -k