Re: Display of cross references to other manuals

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <address@hidden>
> Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 04:58:42 -0500
> 
>     Thus, to make a cross reference to `The GNU Make Manual', write:
> 
>        @xref{Top, , Overview, make, The GNU Make Manual}.
> 
>     which produces
> 
>        See Overview.
> 
> (The actual text in the Info file is `See *Note Overview: (make)Top.')
> 
> Displaying it this way is confusing because it doesn't show that this
> is a reference another manual.  Perhaps the invisibility should be
> limited to ordinary within-manual references.

I think, in this particular case at the least, the cross-reference
itself needs work.  I'd suggest

     Thus, to make a cross reference to `The GNU Make Manual', write:
 
         @xref{Top, , Overview of GNU Make, make, The GNU Make Manual}.
 
     which produces
 
         See Overview of GNU Make.

In general, whenever an xref points to another manual, especially when
the node pointed to is "Top" in that other manual, IMHO the reference
text should clearly show that another manual is being referenced.
This will benefit the HTML output as well, since it hides the node
name not unlike what Emacs does nowadays.