Re: Divergence in menu appearance between Emacs Info and standalone Info

[Robert J. Chassell]

   You're not making much sense here; how does the verbiage surrounding
   traditional info xrefs help a novice writer understand Texinfo?

As far as I can see, many people are absorbing, often without
realizing it, the broken design model of HTML, and are not gaining a
sense of the importance of nodes.

When Buffer-menu-use-header-line is set to t, in the following, some
novices do not realize that they do not have to connect to the
Internet to see "Overview" and "Change Log", but that they are in
different manuals:

    Patches are most welcome; if possible, please make them with `diff -c'
    (see Overview.) and include `ChangeLog' entries (see Change Log.).

They think that `Overview' and `ChangeLog' are the node names.

I agree that there is a problem with fully formed parenthetical cross
references:  too many parentheses.

The historical format moves the inner parentheses further away
from the outer parentheses, but does not look good:

    (see *note Overview: (diffutils)Top.)

One advantage of the historical format is that it is obviously
different from the format used by `g' (Info-goto-node) and by a menu.

Perhaps the cross reference output formats should look more like the
menu format. Here is what I mean where `_' suggests the printed output
of @cite:

@xref{Indicating, , Indicating Definitions, texinfo, Texinfo Manual}.

  In Info 
    when Buffer-menu-use-header-line is set to t:
            See (texinfo)Indicating.

    when Buffer-menu-use-header-line is set to nil:
            See Indicating Definitions: (texinfo)Indicating.

  In HTML:  See <a href="texinfo.html#Indicating">Indicating Definitions</a>.

  In XML with texinfo.dtd:

            See
            <xref>
              <xrefnodename>Indicating</xrefnodename>
              <xrefprinteddesc>Indicating Definitions</xrefprinteddesc>
              <xrefinfofile>texinfo</xrefinfofile>
            </xref>.

  Printed:  See "Indicating Definitions" in the _Texinfo Manual_.

(see @pxref{Indicating, , Indicating Definitions, texinfo, Texinfo Manual})

  In Info 
    when Buffer-menu-use-header-line is set to t:
            (see (texinfo)Indicating)

    when Buffer-menu-use-header-line is set to nil:
            (see Indicating Definitions: (texinfo)Indicating)

  In HTML:  (see <a href="texinfo.html#Indicating">Indicating Definitions</a>)

  In XML with texinfo.dtd:

            (see
            <xref>
              <xrefnodename>Indicating</xrefnodename>
              <xrefprinteddesc>Indicating Definitions</xrefprinteddesc>
              <xrefinfofile>texinfo</xrefinfofile>
            </xref>)

  Printed:  (see "Indicating Definitions" in the _Texinfo Manual_)


and in a menu:

    * Indicating Definitions: (texinfo)Indicating.   How to indicate
                                                     definitions, files, 
                                                     etc.

-- 
    Robert J. Chassell                         Rattlesnake Enterprises
    http://www.rattlesnake.com                  GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
    http://www.teak.cc                             address@hidden