Re: restraining @center location and add other centering environments?

[Patrice Dumas]

On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 05:19:20PM -0600, Karl Berry wrote:
>     @address@hidden Centered and in code text}
> 
> It's erroneous, since @center has to start at the beginning of a line.

If it is erroneous, then it means that something along

@table @asis
@item @center centered item

Blah blah
@end table

isn't feasible, but I think this is unfortunate.

>     @center A centered address@hidden is 
>     a footnote for centered text} with a footnote
> 
> It's erroneous, since the newline after "This is" is the end of
> @center's argument.

Indeed, but once again I think that this is not unreasonable to 
ask for footnotes in centered text.

>     What I propose is that @center should only be used in toplevel text
> 
> It depends on what you mean by top-level.  The canonical use of @center
> is within @titlepage.  It can't be used as (part of) an argument to
> another @-command, for sure.

Yes, that's what I meant, including not within @itemize, not in @menu...
While a @flushcenter could be completly unambiguously nested.

>     and that any @-command opened in @center should be closed before the
>     end of line.
> 
> Yes.
> 
>     To still be able to center some text flexibly I think that a new
>     environment similar with @flushleft and @flushright (maybe called
>     @flushcenter?) should be introduced.
> 
> Oleg already defined @raggedcenter, in fact (I asked him to remove the
> doc though since a use for it was not apparent), and @flushcenter would
> not be hard either.  (Filled vs. non-filled text.)

Indeed, I was thinking about non filled text, it is what seems more useful
to me, but raggedcenter may also make sense.

> I don't have a problem with either of these, but I'm not anxious to
> define new commands that no one has ever requested, either ...
> maybe after the texi2html switch.

The point is that currently in texi2html erroneous @center uses are 
accepted and there are even test cases. But I wanted to get rid of those
complications and incompatibilities with TeX or makeinfo, though also 
try to avoid that the tested possibilities are not doable anymore (even 
though they are not really doable currently since it is not consistent 
with TeX, at least it gave an idea of what could be desirable).

>     Also a bracketed environment could be introduced, to be used in paragraphs
>     or in @item or in titles or other in-text environments. Like, for example
>     @centeredtext{Some text centered}
> 
> It couldn't be feasibly implemented in TeX, in general.  It would have
> to close the paragraph, do the centered text, and start a new
> paragraph.  And that can already be done with @center.

This means that using something like @centeritem or @centertab instead of

@item @centeredtext{Some text centered}

is preferable? This would be consistent, for example with @centerchap versus
normal @chapter (or whatever corresponds with @centerchap and is not 
centered).

--
Pat