Re: sidebar in docbook

[Karl Berry]

>From your description, it seems like a "sidebar" is a kind of @float:

    @float Sidebar,sidebar1
    ... sidebar content ...
    @caption{This is the caption for the side.}
    @end float
    ...
    @xref{sidebar1}.

You can put in your own @cartouche if you really want such ugliness :).

So, here again, I would submit that the best approach would be to have a
configurable way to convert the particular kind of Texinfo @float into a
Docbook <sidebar>.

Gotta go work on TeX now.

karl

P.S. Texinfo @float's don't actually float, but maybe one day they
will.  Not been needed thus far.  My impression is that @float has
not been used much by authors, if at all.

P.P.S. Although it would be possible to hack TeX definitions so you
start the cartouche in one @macro and end it in another, that won't help
for the other formats.

P.P.P.S. Re macro madness in general: we explicitly decided not to
implement yet another form of macros in Texinfo 5.  Instead, our
recommendation is that people use preprocessors that can actually do
rational macro expansion -- m4 being an obvious choice, but it could be
awk or anything else.  It's become clear, to me anyway, that Texinfo's
@macro expansion is utterly irrational, not to mention a malformed
abortion of a misfeature.  (Not that I feel strongly about it or
anything. :)  So that is not the path I recommend, in general.