RE: Info tutorial is out of date

[Drew Adams]

       Nonetheless, some of the suggested changes that Drew made
       are good ones. The topic of invisible text is confusing

    I do not see what is confusing about it.  It has been claimed that it
    is not very useful.  But it really is, for people using Info from
    within Emacs.  The fact that quite a bit of text appears apparently
    out of nowhere when yanking, printing or writing to a file can be very
    confusing to people (I still quite often get surprised by it and I can
    only imagine how confusing it can be for less experienced users).  The
    node explains to people why that happens and how they can see exactly
    what they are going to yank, print or write to file by temporarily
    making all text visible using visible-mode.

And the relation to Info is?

    This is useful knowledge, not just for Info, but for other
    Emacs buffers with invisible text as well.

To the question "What does it have to do with *Info*?", you seem to have
answered: nothing; it's not Info-specific.

In that case, it doesn't belong in an Info tutorial. It sounds like an
attempt to explain an Emacs invisible-text gotcha. Put it in the Emacs
manual where invisible text is discussed - after making it comprehensible.

    `visible-mode' which is introduced in this node, is used later to help
    users who want to learn how to use both the Emacs and standalone Info
    readers see how the same text looks in the standalone reader (and
    hence understand remarks about that reader) without actually having to
    launch that reader and search for the same example text in that reader.

Ah, that's what I gathered too. If that's the raison d'etre, then I say toss
it. Put it somewhere else if you like, but certainly not near the beginning
of the Info tutorial that beginner Emacs users will follow _to try to
understand how to use a manual_. It has no place there.

Besides, it's so poorly written that it is, to me, incomprehensible.

Before you explained it, I thought maybe there would be some argument for it
in the tutorial, once I understood more. Now that I understand (a little)
more, it seems to be totally inappropriate for the Info tutorial.

*IF* (I, for one, am not convinced) it were important for people who would
be using both Emacs and the standalone Info, as you say, then it could be
part of the Info _manual_ (not the tutorial). It is not written as a
tutorial procedure, anyway.

On the other hand, you seem to suggest that it is not Info-specific, and
describes an invisible text gotcha whose scope is Emacs. In that case, it
belongs in the Emacs manual (after rewriting), if it is important/useful.

    The note also explains how readers who prefer to have the info that
    Emacs (but not the standalone reader) hides by default available in
    Emacs as well, can achieve that by using `Info-hide-note-references'.

Somewhere else, please.

    I believe that all of this is useful information and the node is not
    even very long.

I believe that all of this is N characters too long, where N is its length.

    Note that the decision to add that material to the Info manual was
    made after quite some discussion on Emacs devel, with your approval
    and with Karl's support.

Maybe it's just in the wrong place, and needs to be rewritten a bit.