Re: [bug #43042] Texinfo manual typo and improvement in info node 'Node Line Requirements'

[Patrice Dumas]

On Thu, Oct 09, 2014 at 05:57:03PM +0000, Karl Berry wrote:
> Referring to ...
> http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=1830
> https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?43042
> 
> And the manual text:
> 
>     ... In contexts
>     +where the exact node name is required (for example, in a menu entry),
>     +this is the name that that should be used, i.e.@: with no leading or
>     +trailing spaces, and a single internal space.
> 
> Is there any context besides menu entries where the node name is not
> normalized?  makeinfo normalizes them in cross-references.  

I think that cross-references in @example and similar environments are
not normalized.  In fact cross-references are not really normalized,
they simply are considered as text an therefore flow with the text
and so spaces are normalized because spaces are normalized in
paragraphs and lines too.  In fact, it is the same for the node names on
node lines, they are simply treated as text, hence the normalization.
To be precise, they are treated as text as if they were in @code{}, so
no space doubling for instance.

@menu are considered to be space preserving environments, like @example
and such, so spaces are preserved in node names in menu.

> In
> principle, I rather think it should happen in menus too.  What was the
> argument for not doing so?  Not that it's a big deal.

The idea was that users had complete control over menu formatting such
that they could put the amount of space they want in particular to align
entries any way they want.


My opinion is that the reader should normalize the node names in any
situation (cross refs, menus, node lines) where a node name appears.
We can also change the way @menu are formatted in Info, though I think
that the current situation is better, but to me this is a separate
issue.

-- 
Pat