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Re: Colon in index items
From: |
Eli Zaretskii |
Subject: |
Re: Colon in index items |
Date: |
Mon, 18 Mar 2002 13:18:37 +0200 (IST) |
On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Richard Stallman wrote:
> This was considered as well. The problem with this is that you'd like
> the Info reader to display `colon' as `:', otherwise it would confuse
> users, I think.
>
> It would not confuse them any more than the change you are making in
> the source files, which consists of replacing `:' with `colon'.
What I did in the Emacs Texinfo sources was a temporary measure; it doesn't
pretend to be a solution to the problem. Its main caus is to avoid
strange error messages/freezes/crashes in Info viewers that are not
ready to cope with colons, and to prevent ``bug reports'' from users
telling us that our manuals cannot build with Texinfo 4.1 without a
warning (this warning is new with Texinfo 4.1).
So I don't think my replacement should be compared with a solution to
the original problem.
> What appears in the index in Info would be the same either way,
> and the behavior of the i command would be the same either way.
Perhaps there's a misunderstanding. Let's assume that we have a manual
about C++ classes, which describes a class `foo'. Then it will probably
document methods like `foo:foo', `foo:~foo', and `foo:bar'. As a user
who reads that manual and looks for the methods from that class, I'd try
typing "i foo: TAB". Is that what you have in mind as well? Or do you
suggest that the users type "i foo<colon> TAB" instead? I don't think
users could guess they need to do the latter.
If they do type "i foo: TAB", then won't it be confusing to see this as
completions:
foo<colon>foo foo<colon>~foo foo<colon>bar
?
> But your change gives bad results in other output formats.
I tried to make a change that would avoid most of the adverse side
effects. In any case, the change I made is not meant to be used in every
case; I simply saw that the Emacs manual has only a hadful of such cases,
and that they all can be taken care of with a simple change. It's not
that I suggest that as a canonical solution, or ask for documenting it in
the Texinfo manual. It's a kludge.
- Colon in index items, Richard Stallman, 2002/03/14
- Re: Colon in index items, Karl Berry, 2002/03/14
- Re: Colon in index items, Richard Stallman, 2002/03/15
- Re: Colon in index items, Eli Zaretskii, 2002/03/15
- Re: Colon in index items, Richard Stallman, 2002/03/17
- Re: Colon in index items, Eli Zaretskii, 2002/03/17
- Re: Colon in index items, Richard Stallman, 2002/03/18
- Re: Colon in index items,
Eli Zaretskii <=
- Re: Colon in index items, Richard Stallman, 2002/03/19
- Re: Colon in index items, Eli Zaretskii, 2002/03/19
Re: Colon in index items, Karl Berry, 2002/03/16
Re: Colon in index items, Karl Berry, 2002/03/18
Re: Colon in index items, Karl Berry, 2002/03/18