Re: Setting Page Size and displaying result correctly

[Gavin Smith]

On Tue, Oct 06, 2020 at 07:51:08PM +0200, Christopher Dimech wrote:
> These are two considerations for Page Sizes as described below.
> 
> 
> 1. Consistency in applying commands
> 
> It is true that the manual says that @pagesizes refers to text-area.
> However, it should be remembered that papersizes such as @afourpaper
> and @afivepaper always refer to the actual size of the paper. The
> default margins will then set the text-area. The manual already says
> that setting of margins is considered an elaboration that should
> customarily be defined using commands in texinfo.tex.

It seems to me that the region of the page excluding the margins is a
meaningful concept that a user may wish to specify, and thus the existing
@pagesizes command may be useful and should be kept with its current
behaviour.  If it was the case that people needed to specify arbitrary
paper sizes then another command could be introduced for this.  I don't
expect that there would be such a need due to paper usually being produced
in a few standard sizes.

> Just as @afourpaper and @afivepaper always refer to to actual page
> size rather than text-area, other settings for page sizes should ideally
> follow same rule - User sets the actual page size, and not the size of
> the text area.
> 
> 2. Possibilities for using Texinfo for Screencasts, especially screencasts
> that include the display of mathematical expressions.
> 
> The difficulty setting a different page size does not crop up for software
> manuals.  But the problem crops up when you want to use a texinfo document
> for a screen cast.  In such an instance, changing the page size would
> be important, because the standard paper sizes make the text too small
> for display purposes on the screen.

I'm not too sure what your use case is for this but perhaps the HTML output
would be more appropriate for this?

Display of mathematical expressions may be difficult with HTML, but it is
supposed to be possible.

> This would enable texinfo to be used in many other circumstances in addition
> to simply writing manuals.

Writing manuals is the main purpose of Texinfo.  It is not a general
typesetting or formatting system for the display of arbitrary information.