On Tue, May 20, 2025 at 05:17:31PM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> Hi,
>
> There is a lack of documentation concerning blank lines in the
> texinfo source, in particular concerning their effect with the
> various output formats.
>
> In the GNU Texinfo 7.1.1 manual, it is said that blank lines are
> significant for @example and @verbatim.
>
> For @itemize and @enumerate, it is recommended to put a blank line
> between items.
>
> Ditto for @table:
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Normally, you should put a blank line between table entries. This
> puts a blank line in the Info file, which looks better unless the
> entries are very brief.
>
> End the table with a line consisting of ‘@end table’. Follow the end
> of the table by a blank line for consistent formatting across output
> formats.
>
> For example, the following table highlights the text in the first
> column with the ‘@samp’ command:
>
> @table @samp
> @item foo
> This is the text for
> @samp{foo}.
>
> @item bar
> Text for @samp{bar}.
> @end table
>
> This produces:
>
> ‘foo’
> This is the text for ‘foo’.
> ‘bar’
> Text for ‘bar’.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> But I don't see a blank line above for the produced output.
This was an error in the manual. I am not certain but the output may
have changed in Texinfo 5.0 and possibly the output in the manual used
to be correct. The text in the manual was unchanged from a commit on
2002-08-25 (16440098c62) which was starting the repository.
> However, when testing, I do get a blank line:
>
> ‘foo’
> This is the text for ‘foo’.
>
> ‘bar’
> Text for ‘bar’.
>
> BTW, this seems to affect only the info file (not the generated
> HTML and PDF files).
First of all, we are unlikely to be able to accurately describe the
spacing in all the PDF and HTML output and it is not our objective
for these to match across all output formats.
> There is no documentation at all for @multitable.
> On the following example:
>
> \input texinfo @c -*-texinfo-*-
> @setfilename multitable.info
>
> @ifnottex
> @node Top, (dir), (dir), (dir)
> @top multitable test
> @end ifnottex
>
> @multitable {col 1} {col 2}
> @item a @tab 1
> @item b @tab 2
>
> @item c @tab 3
> @item d @tab 4
> @end multitable
>
> @bye
>
> from <https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=512307>,
> the behavior has changed over the time. With texi2any 7.1.1, I get
> a blank line in the info and PDF files between the second and third
> items, but not in the HTML file.
Is there a problem with the current output?
It seems to me that it does not matter what appears in the HTML file,
only what is displayed in the HTML browser. A blank line in the HTML
file does not correspond to blank vertical space displayed to the person
browsing the file.
Likewise for PDF output, there is not such a thing as a "blank line" the
way there is for Info output: only more or less blank vertical space.
> For @multitable, there was this discussion:
>
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2019-07/msg00000.html
>
That discussion appeared to be resolved to the satisfaction of the
querent.
> --
> Vincent Lefèvre <[email protected]> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
> 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
> Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Pascaline project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
>
