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

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

Gavin,

Thank you for the feedback.

> On 2020/01/12, at 20:01, Gavin Smith <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> 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.

I understand. I was mostly trying to see what was the result in the various 
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.

Currently, the PDF only has "Setting the mark (q.v.) at a position in the text 
also activates it." so I guess that would be good enough for the PDF output to 
reproduce that.

>> 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.

I see.

>> 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.

Ok.

>> "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.

Thank you. I guess that will give me a good reason to start the "TeX book" :)


Jean-Christophe Helary
-----------------------------------------------
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune