Re: Non-ASCII characters in Info files produced by Texinfo 7.1

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Eli.

On Thu, Oct 26, 2023 at 13:11:46 +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2023 09:43:37 +0000
> > Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> > From: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>

> > > Are there any other opinions?  For now, the opinions are 5:3 in favor
> > > of keeping the pre-7.1 behavior of producing Unicode characters, i.e.
> > > in favor of adding "-c ASCII_DASHES_AND_QUOTES=0" to our makeinfo
> > > options.  If no other opinions will emerge within a few days that
> > > change this picture, I will add that switch to our Makefile's.

> > Please don't do that.  Please instead make it a configurable option,
> > something like --with-info-unicode-punctuation.

> When there's a 2:1 ratio in favor of the change, ...

It's not 2:1, it was 5:3 on a very small sample size.  Now, with Gregory
chiming in, it appears to be 5:4.

> ... making a configure-time option for it sounds like a lot of work
> without justification.

I think there's justification.  How much work is it to introduce a new
config option?  I've never done it.

> > > Note that users can always countermand this by saying

> > >   make INFO_OPTS='--no-split -c ASCII_DASHES_AND_QUOTES=1'

> > > when they build Emacs.

> > "Always" is the word.  This means always editing the Makefile each time
> > it gets updated by a ./configure, or always having a constant
> > uncomfortable diff between the repository and one's working copy of
> > Makefile.in.

> No, I meant type the above from the command line.  No need to edit
> anything.

YUCK!  So after each make bootstrap, one will additionally have to go
through all the documentation directories, whether by hand or by script,
and redo the building of the info by a clumsy command line.

Again, how much work would it be to add such a configuration option?

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).