Re: Changes to Texinfo DTD

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2003 19:47:30 -0600 (CST)
> From: Luc Teirlinck <address@hidden>
> 
>      The GNU C library manual (@pxref{Locales,,, libc, GNU Libc Manual})
>      has more information about locales and locale items.
> 
> That would look terrible in the printed manual with a double nearly
> identically worded reference to the GNU Libc manual, once outside
> parentheses and once inside parentheses.

That just means my wording should perhaps be improved further, or
maybe we should use @ifinfo and @ifnotinfo to make the text loog good
in both online and hard-copy version.

But I don't think the text I suggested will ``look terrible'', it will
just look a bit awkward.  It is my experience that Texinfo does that
quite a bit: it doesn't make it easy to write cross-references that
look good in all supported formats.  I think the reason for this is
that each format has its own rules for good style, and it isn't easy
to write text that will be compatible with all of them.

> How would you learn about Locales without _any_ manual being
> referenced?

We should first ask ourselves what is there for the user to learn
before she understands what the ELisp manual says in that section.
It's possible that the amount of additional info is small, in which
case we could simply put it into the ELisp manual.  It could also be
that the user doesn't need to know anything else to understand the
ELisp facilities enough to use them.

Do we know what information from the glibc manual is required reading
for the reader of the ELisp manual?

> But why deprive users that do have the manual installed of this
> information because other users do not have the manual installed?

If you mention the manual, the user might think that she must read it
because it contains some crucial information without which it is
impossible to understand the text in point.  I doubt that this is the
case.

>     More generally, if the underlying C library is something other than
>     glibc, I might wonder whether the discussion in the glibc manual is at
>     all relevant to the treatment of locales I will see on my system.
> 
> That manual pays considerable attention to portability.

Portability has nothing to do with this.  The glibc manual can
describe facilities provided only by glibc and not found anywhere
else.  The question is, again, what exactly we want the user to pick
up in the glibc manual.