Re: --xml and different node and sectionning structures

[Torsten Bronger]

Hallöchen!

Patrice Dumas writes:

> On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 10:47:10AM +0200, Torsten Bronger wrote:
>
>> [...]
>> 
>> I think Texinfo XML's nesting should reflect secioning only, and
>> nodes should be just empty elements, as the optional first child
>> of a section.
>
> That could be an easy way out. The problem is that the opposite is
> more consistent with the texinfo way, a section is within a
> node. But another easy way out would be to have nodes as
> stand-alone elements, but not first childs of sections, they
> should just be output where they appear.

This way is probably better.  Anyway, only for Info, nodes are
structuring.  For almost all other use cases, they are label
providers, not more.

> [...]
>
>> Visiting Texinfo after a long time, I wonder whether there is
>> motivation and spare time to overhaul Texinfo, accepting *small*
>> incompatibilities?
>
> This is more or less happening at the software level, since 
> texi2html (written in perl) will replace makeinfo in C soon.

Sounds good.

> But it should be fully compatible (except that @macro would become
> like @rmacro) at the input format level.

The imcompatibility thing is not as important as the other things
(e.g. UTF-8).

> [...]
>  
>> (4) Syntax improvements.  Many commands have gathered too many
>>     arguments, there are too many cross reference commands, and the
>>     conditional processing should be put in question.
>
> What do you mean with 'there are too many cross reference
> commands'?  Do you mean that xref, pxref and ref should be only
> one command?

Yes.  They have very complicated semantics anyway, with inserted
words and punctuation.  Besides, it is impossible to guarantee
grammatically and orthographically correct output.  LaTeX's ref and
pageref model is superior and easier to handle.

> Which commands has too many argument?

xref.  The docs even contain different sections for the different
numbers of arguments!

> and what problems do you see with the conditional processing?

I think it is not necessary.  In rare cases where it makes sense
(images come to my mind), one can make them explicit part of the
syntax.  By the way, what is allowed in macros should be clearly
defined (and restricted to what is generally parsable).

Tschö,
Torsten.

-- 
Torsten Bronger, aquisgrana, europa vetus
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