Re: Integration of Info manuals in programming modes, Re: Integration of Info manuals in programming modes

[Björn Bidar]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > That's a good idea. I want to add to context that Sphinx plugins can
>   > break the Info output entirely.
>
> Could you please say what changes you have in mind for Sphinx?

I'm not entirely sure but from what I have read it does appear like that
plugins can break the output by inserting their generated markup in
between a block which then causes for example syntax errors.

It's kinda like this (pseudo code)

@toc

toc items here

plugin inserts their markup but forgets and @end somewhere.

@end

The result is that the generated Texinfo contains formatting and or
syntax errors.

> I am interested in Sphinx because I think it could be developed into a
> superior replacement for Texinfo, by adding ways to specify the output
> style distinctions that Sphinx currently does not handle.  But it
> would take some design work, not just simple programming.

I think both are different types of software one uses reStructuredText
as input format while the other (Texinfo) uses well Texinfo.

I'm not a (La)Tex user outside of writing a few documents here and there
but bringing Texinfo closer to Tex could be a good idea while keeping
the output format the same.