Re: Changes to Texinfo DTD

[Luc Teirlinck]

I am jumping in a thread I have not been following from the beginning
which always carries the danger of completely missing the point, but I
believe that the quote below is talking about alternatives to the
present reformatting of Info files when `Info-hide-note-references' is
t.  If yes, I have a point I want to make to make sure that this
alternative does not make the same mistake as the present
reformatting.  If not, sorry.

Juri Linkov wrote:

   This will solve the current problem in Info files, where some lines
   change their length after hiding a part of reference.  In XML all
   additional information can be freely included into tag attributes
   without affecting the filling of plain text.  For example, <a
   xref="(elisp)Menu Keymaps">Menu Keymaps</a>.

I hope it will also solve the other problem with the current situation
in Emacs with Info-hide-note-references set to t.  Namely, in the
above example, it would just print "Menu Keymaps" without any
indication that this is going to carry you out of the manual you are
reading into the Elisp manual.

Take (elisp)Locales as an example.  The texinfo source contains:

@xref{Locales,,, libc, GNU Libc Manual}, for more information about
locales and locale items.

With Info-hide-note-references set to t this gives:

See Locales for more information about locales and locale items.

"Locales" is the node we are looking at.  So the user thinks:  "This
is silly.  This just offers to carry me to the node I am already
staring at." and does not follow the reference.

With Info-hide-note-references set to nil, we see:

*Note Locales: (libc)Locales, for more information about locales and
locale items.

Oh, it is actually _not_ the node we are staring at, but a node with
exactly the same name in the libc manual!  Now, if we are not sure
what all this "locale" stuff is really about, here is a useful link to
follow.

"*Note Locales: (libc)Locales" is actually OK with me, but other
people consider it too ugly.  That is OK with me too as long as it
does not get replaced with something pretty but misleading.  Replacing
it with "See Locales in the (libc) manual" would be OK.  I am not sure
whether it would be safe to replace it with the "fully pretty":
"See Locales in the GNU Libc Manual", because that refers to the
printed manual. It would look OK in this example, but I do not believe
it is guaranteed to always be OK.

Sincerely,

Luc.