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Re: Unadorned cross-references


From: Gavin Smith
Subject: Re: Unadorned cross-references
Date: Mon, 31 May 2021 22:35:58 +0100

On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 9:38 PM Augusto Stoffel <arstoffel@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, yes, it _explains_ the issue.  But why not solve the issue?

It explains why it is hard to solve the issue.

> > Yes, but how do I get a plain link, with no extra markup?
> >
> >      You can't.  Info is a plain text format that is displayed mostly
> >      as-is in the viewers, and without the '*note' text there would be
> >      nothing to mark text as a link.
>
> Of course some markup is needed to indicate a link.  The problem is not
> the markup, but rather the grammatical assumption that every internal
> cross-reference starts with "see".

That's an Emacs issue, not a Texinfo issue. In the Info file it says "*note"
not "see".

> So I'll flesh out my suggestion a bit further.  Define a new macro, say
> @yref, which works as follows:

>       *Note Lightning: Electrical Effects#

Of course you can invent new syntax but I really question if it is
worth it. For one thing, what if a node name contains a #? This syntax
won't be compatible with existing Info readers which won't realise the
# ends the node name. You shouldn't assume that it would be easy to
implement this in the Info readers either.

I consider the Info format to be "done" - I don't see any point in
radically changing the cross-reference syntax in a backward
incompatible manner 45 years after it was first implemented.

If you want better display of Info manuals, the way forward would be
not to display Info manuals at all but to use the HTML output from
Texinfo somehow instead.



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