Re: rethinking @def*

[Gavin Smith]

On Fri, Jul 29, 2022 at 12:53:53AM +0200, pertusus@free.fr wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I did an implementation in LaTeX.
> 
> A first possible issue.  In non @deftype*, @code around metasyntactical
> separators (bracket or parentheses) causes the metasyntactical
> separators to become slanted.  It is consistent, putting in @code remove
> the automatic upright, but it is not very intuitive, as @code turns non
> slanted to slanted.
> 
> With the first line, [ are upright typewriter.  With the second line,
> [ are slanted typewriter:
> 
> @defspec foobar (var [from to [inc]]) default
> @defspecx foobar (var @code{[}from to @code{[}inc@code{]]}) code
> 

In texinfo.tex, I have only done the cancelling of the special definitions
of [ and ] inside @r and @t.  There, the special definition entailed the
use of a roman font.  In LaTeX \EmbracOn is slightly different in that
it uses slanted glyphs for brackets, but this could be for both typewriter
and roman typefaces.

In texinfo.tex, it was necessary to cancel the special definition in
@t to allow a typewriter font to be used.  It's also the case that the
default font for [ in texinfo.tex is roman, not typewriter.  I'm not
saying that it has to be consistent between TeX and LaTeX, though.

I imagine there would be very little need for slanted brackets in the
def arguments.  However, to permit this, I suggest that \EmbracOff{} could
be limited to the output for @r only.  Does that sound okay?