Re: (q.v.) in the emacs manual

[Gavin Smith]

On Sun, Jan 12, 2020 at 01:54:52PM +0900, Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
> The glossary in the emacs manual has lots of (q.v.) to "refer" to other items 
> in the glossary. Such references are not handled as hypertext links. They are 
> just plain strings that require the user to manually search for the 
> corresponding term.
> 
> Considering that texinfo only has 3 types of cross references and that none 
> of them fits the requirements of "q.v." (i.e., just a link, no "strings" 
> attached, no page number added, etc.) my idea is that the manual authors 
> simply preferred to resort to this visual reference (just write "q.v.") and 
> let the user find the reference manually rather than trying to create a 
> solution in texinfo.
> 
> I found 2 q.v. in the Elisp Reference, 134 in the Emacs manual.
> 
> I tried using @ref and here is what I get:

There isn't any way to get what you want with a simple use of an 
existing Texinfo command.  The difficulty is creating a functional 
cross-reference in all of the output formats.

> PDF:
> Aborting means getting out of a [recursive editing], page 592.
> 
> I get the extra ", page 592" where I'd just be happy with "[recursive 
> editing]" or even "recursive editing (q.v.)".

The "page 592" is for if the manual is printed.  I'm not sure about 
adding "(q.v.)" automatically.

> HTML:
> Aborting means getting out of a recursive edit.
> 
> Where "recursive edit" is a link to the anchor I added to "Recursive Editing 
> Level". The HTML output is perfect.
> 
> terminal INFO:
> Aborting means getting out of a *note recursive edit: recursive
>      editing.
> 
> I don't need the "*note" and the ":recursive editing". The link is sufficient.

The extra text is needed to mark it as a link in the info format.

> GUI Emacs INFO:
> Aborting means getting out of a see recursive edit
>      .
> 
> I don't need the "see" and it looks like there is an extra space before the 
> period.

It's not reliable for Emacs to add a "see" before the link.
>
> "quod vide" is "used to direct a reader to another part of a book or article 
> for further information." (Oxford Dictionary of English). It seems perfectly 
> relevant to have such parts handled as short links in Texinfo.
> 
> I've been looking at the texinfo.tex file to see if I could do something 
> there. Is that the right place to do that ?

If you were to implement a new Texinfo command it would be in 
texinfo.tex as well as in texi2any.  I'd suggest doing something with 
Texinfo conditionals and macros to define a macro differently for 
different output formats, e.g.

@iftex
@macro plainref{ref}
\ref\
@end macro
@end iftex

and so on.