Re: [PATCH 1/4] ptsname_r: new module

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Jim, all,

> >> I suggest using @tie{} between os (or program or ...) names and
> >> versions.  That way the line breaks come out ok in both the source and
> >> the output.
> >
> > Indeed, the result looks better (at least in HTML). I tested
> ...
> I find that the mark-up renders the texi less readable, and obviously
> less copy&pastable.
> Maybe it's just that I don't (yet?) have some Emacs texi-viewing mode
> enabled that hides those @tie{}s.
> 
> However, I do recognize the value in better formatting.
> 
> Tough call.  I'm slightly in favor of adding the @tie directives.

I'm also slightly in favour of good typography.

But I'll do it by using no-break spaces in the .texi files. Like this:

--- doc/glibc-functions/ptsname_r.texi.orig     Thu Nov 10 00:01:31 2011
+++ doc/glibc-functions/ptsname_r.texi  Wed Nov  9 23:45:07 2011
@@ -12,5 +12,5 @@
 @itemize
 @item
 This function is missing on some platforms:
-MacOS X 10.5, FreeBSD 6.0, NetBSD 5.0, OpenBSD 3.8, Minix 3.1.8, AIX 5.1, 
HP-UX 11, IRIX 6.5, Solaris 11 2010-11, Cygwin, mingw, MSVC 9, BeOS.
+MacOS X 10.5, FreeBSD 6.0, NetBSD 5.0, OpenBSD 3.8, Minix 3.1.8, AIX 5.1, 
HP-UX 11, IRIX 6.5, Solaris 11 2010-11, Cygwin, mingw, MSVC 9, BeOS.
 @end itemize
--- doc/gnulib.texi.orig        Thu Nov 10 00:01:31 2011
+++ doc/gnulib.texi     Wed Nov  9 23:44:01 2011
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 \input texinfo   @c -*-texinfo-*-
 @comment %**start of header
 @setfilename gnulib.info
address@hidden UTF-8
 @settitle GNU Gnulib
 @c Define a new index for the magic constants in regex.texi.
 @defcodeindex cn

The output looks fine in
  - HTML output,
  - PDF output,
  - .info output when viewed by the 'info' program in a UTF-8 locale.
These are the most important environments for viewing TeXinfo manuals.

And copy&paste to email will work fine.

Yes I know the info output looks
  - strange in Emacs (a magenta colored underscore instead of a no-break
    space),
  - broken in ISO-8859-1 locales.

I'll trust that if enough people are working in these environments, these
problems will get fixed.

> I enforced some measure of normalization with this syntax-check rule in 
> cfg.mk:

Yes, a syntax-check rule for the *.texi files will be helpful to verify
that we use a no-break space between an OS name and its version number
everywhere.

Bruno
-- 
In memoriam Robert Blum <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Blum>