Re: Texinfo help, please

[David Kastrup]

"Phil Holmes" <address@hidden> writes:

> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "David Kastrup" <address@hidden>
> To: <address@hidden>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 12:22 PM
> Subject: Re: Texinfo help, please
>
>
>> "Phil Holmes" <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>> I'm doing a little project to get rid of all the black bars on the
>>> right side of the PDF of the NR - these indicate material that is too
>>> wide to be properly accommodated on the page.  One of the things that
>>> causes this is text like:
>>>
>>> Fret diagrams for the ukulele are contained in the file
>>> @file{predefined-ukulele-fretboards.ly}.
>>>
>>> This produces output as seen in the attached image.
>>>
>>> There are a number of examples where texi2pdf clearly does not
>>> calculate line width correctly when the @file{} is used.
>>
>> It just does not wrap.
>
> It should wrap between the words "the file" and the filename.

Obviously not enough stretchability for that to fit.  You can try

@tex
\global\emergencystretch=5in
@end tex

and see where this gets you (more likely than not, to unbelievable
ugliness).  Or you can try writing raggedright paragraphs.  Or just make
sure that long "words" like that are either at the beginning of a
paragraph, or infrequent, in rather long paragraphs, and not close to
their start.  Then TeX has a chance of messing with the line breaks of
the paragraph material above the file to make it fit in a good place.

> If I was to follow my own suggestion, I would do this:
>
> Fret diagrams for the ukulele are contained in the file @*
> @file{predefined-ukulele-fretboards.ly}.

Or rename the silly file by removing "predefined-".  It is not like such
a file can contain anything that is _not_ "predefined".

> I don't expect the filename to break/wrap - it's the text around it
> that should.

It needs space for that.

> That will work well with this specific example and I will probably
> follow it.  There are other examples where there are, for example, 2
> filenames one after the other, and texi2pdf insists on putting these
> on a single line, thus overflowing, rather than breaking between them,
> which would be perfectly suitable.

Try the emergencystretch route (which makes TeX not give up on hopeless
cases but rather muddle along), and you'll likely find out that this
solution is _not_ perfectly suitable.

Anyway, I strongly recommend that you read the _entire_ section
and particularly!!! the end of

(info "(Texinfo) Overfull hboxes")

in the Texinfo manual.  Something like chapter 20.10.

or 
<URL:http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/Overfull-hboxes.html>

-- 
David Kastrup