Re: rethinking @def*

[Gavin Smith]

On Tue, Aug 02, 2022 at 03:18:22PM +0200, pertusus@free.fr wrote:
> > When would a @def* block be inheriting font styles that we would need to
> > cancel?
> 
> There is @def* in @example and similar, though this is not a
> very important use.  The idea, here, was to be more in line with
> TeX/LaTeX formatting.  I like in particular your idea that we could say
> that @def* (not @deftype) are @deftype {} {name} @r{@slanted{arg}}

I'd suggested @deftype {} {name} @var{arg}.

I doubt we need to accomodate @def* nested inside @example.

> > It seems like there are three choices for the tag, <em>, <i> and
> > <var>.  Previously, we used <em>.  I don't have a strong opinion
> > which one is best.
> 
> I think that <em> was actually a poor choice, not the right semantics,
> no clear formatting, different from TeX/LaTeX.

I agree it is not a great match for this use.  It may be that there
isn't a tag which matches perfectly and we just have to go for the
best fit.

> > I think it would be fine to use <em> or <var> and not worry if the browser
> > does use a true italic for these in HTML output.
> 
> As I said above, we want slanted for more similar formatting with
> LaTeX/TeX, so I used the same output as @slanted.  I do not think that
> <em> is appropriate.  <var> would be right, in like with the
> metasyntactic variable semantic of the @def* not @deftype* arguments.
> I did not go that way to be more in line with what I thought we would
> say, to make clear that the @var formatting is not used, only slanted,
> mostly to avoid upper case in Info default.  But <var> in HTML would be
> ok to me too.

Good point about Info.  To avoid changing the Info output, we shouldn't
document that (typeless) @def* is equivalent to something with @var in it.
This would be a slight inconsistency between Info and other output formats,
that we could just leave as it is.

> Actually, as long as the formatting remains the same, to be as similar
> as possible to printed output, I do not care much about the details.  I
> tried to stick to a similar formatting as for printed output, but I do
> not think that the deails of how it is implemented matters much.

My preference is to use <var> and to remove the outer <span> (corresponding
to @r).