Re: [Groff] Re: Manuals in pdf format

[Karl Berry]

    > Incidentally, looking at the PDF file, I wonder what could possibly
    > be the purpose of using "italic" dots as leaders in the table of
    > contents?

    I have exactly the same question...

It seems rms made the change nearly 13 years ago:

Sun Nov 21 22:16:21 1993  Richard Stallman  (address@hidden)
        * texinfo.tex [...]
        (\indexdotfill): Use italic periods.

I don't know without asking him (and I doubt he would remember), but I
surmise that he simply thought they looked better, less intrusive maybe
with the lighter weight.  The same leaders are used in index entries, by
the way.

No one has mentioned it to me before now, that I can recall.  I have to
admit the italic periods don't bother me.  In fact, by being oriented a
bit toward the right they are a bit more "leader-y" than normal periods.

(Not that I'm a big fan of leaders in the first place.)

karl