On 01/24/2012 03:01 PM, Karl Berry wrote:
A better alternative might be for makeinfo to create info files
containing the utf-8 directed quotes,
If the user says to use UTF-8, that happens now. We certainly don't
want to use UTF-8 quotes in otherwise 7-bit-ASCII Info/plaintext output.
Info isn't "plaintext" - it's a special format that doesn't make sense
to display except by a program that understands the format. That program
could easily convert UTF-8 quotes to plains ASCII quotes, depending on
the locale (or info command-line flags, or a combination).
[Most of you know my opinion in this matter: info as a *file* format
should be killed dead and replaced by some variant of [X]HTML.
For that to happen, Emacs has to stop reading Info files and start
reading the XML output. I am not aware of anyone working on that, but
then, I probably wouldn't be. Probably rms would have to retire before
any such change has a prospect of succeeding :).
I guess rms could be convinced if the user interface remained more-or-less
the same for both stand-alone info and emacs info mode. I.e. same
navigation
model, keymaps, search, etc. But adding fonts, embedded
pictures/diagram, Unicode,
proper quotes, (at least within Emacs), automatic line re-flow etc etc.
But of course as long as no-body wants to do the work (and I'm certainly
not volunteering) GNU documentation will remain stuck in the 80's.
--
--Per Bothner
[email protected] http://per.bothner.com/
