Re: Cross-reference for a non-English book

[Gavin Smith]

On Sun, Dec 31, 2023 at 08:52:20AM +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> Btw, what exactly does makeinfo produce for cross-references when
> @documentlanguage is not en_US?  Is the "*note" thing still produced,
> or is it replaced by something else?  I'm guessing that "*note" is
> still produced, since the Info readers need that to recognize a
> cross-reference.  And if that is so, then "*note" is still in English,
> isn't it, and thus not very different from "see"?

It is still *note (for @ref and @pxref), or *Note (for @xref).

> And another question: if Emacs is expected to adapt itself to the
> document's language, and for Portuguese produce something like "veja"
> instead, then how can Emacs know what that language is?  The
> @documentlanguage directive leaves no trace in the Info output,
> AFAICT, so what should Emacs do to DTRT here?

You have hit the nail on the head.  makeinfo should be modified to
record the language of the document.  It would be sensible to place it
in the "Local Variables" section at the end of the file.  Currently,
it looks like


Local Variables:
coding: utf-8
End:

Such a section may be recognized by Emacs, too (see Info node
"(emacs)File Variables").

My question is whether the new variable should be "language",
"documentlanguage" or something else.  If Emacs already uses a similar
variable then we could use the same one.

I had a look at the "Language Environments" node in the "emacs" manual
but I doubt that this is what is needed as that is more to do with
character encoding and input methods.

Or perhaps the new variable should have an "Info-" prefix, as in
"Info-language"?

(I am not an Emacs user so may have to be told the obvious.)

There is the minor question of what to do if a document has more than
one @documentlanguage directive, but if that is the case, we can take
the first one that occurs, or the last, or none at all, whichever is
easiest.