Re: @ continuation not working in @def...

[Per Bothner]

On 2/9/21 4:15 PM, Patrice Dumas wrote:

> in general, nothing is ignored at the parsing stage.  That way the
> original document can be more easily regenerated from a format without
> information loss such as TexinfoXML, and also because in some situations
> (@verbatim, @verb, @html, @example...) we want to keep all the spaces as
> is.

Actually, I don't think it is correct to preserve invisible white-space at
end-of-line, even in verbatim modes.  A texinfo file should be viewed a text 
file.
Distinctions between different kinds of line-ending is not part of the
"information set" of a text file, and neither is white-space at end-of-line:
Consider a deck of punch cards (which some of us are old enough to have used for
writing programs), or OCR from a printed page.

Of course this is bikeshedding: I don't care enough to submit a patch or
argue strongly.  But in general a text-file processor (such as a compiler)
which treats different line endings (including end-of-line whitespace) 
differently
is IMO doing it wrong.  (Assuming no backward-compatibility issues, of course.)
--
        --Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://per.bothner.com/