> From: Gavin Smith <[email protected]> > Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2025 19:24:47 +0000 > Cc: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] > > > Would it be possible for you to make the example Info and image files > > you were working with available somewhere for download, so that someone > > else (perhaps rahguzar) could pick up where you left off and try to > > improve the situation? > > > > Thanks. > > Yes, it's possible.
I'd appreciate if you could do that, then. > However, generating and distributing PNG files > for the benefit of Emacs Info may be the wrong approach. Given that we > have reached the point of extending the Info format to mark output as > originating from @math or @displaymath (in order to record the image > generation DPI setting), why not leave it to Emacs itself to generate > these images, rather than distributing them? > > I have installed and tried AUCTeX with preview-latex and it appears to > work fine with text the same size and aligned with surrounding text. So > we could allow Info mode to follow the approach of AUCTeX. > > The downside of this approach is that it would require people to have > LaTeX packages installed to view the mathematical formatting in Info > files. Another possibility is to use another image format (EPS?) > that does in fact have baseline information. Then Info mode would only > do part of the job that AUCTeX does, not relying on LaTeX but still > inserting, scaling and shifting an image. > > preview.el that comes with AUCTeX does have code to set the :ascent > value that you mentioned. > > According to the preview-latex manual(*), AUCTeX does use png files, > but generates these from dvi files, so presumably gets some more information > about the geometry of the formatted text than would just be present in a > png file. The significant downside of this is that the user who wants to read such a manual will need to have LaTeX installed. For the same reason we distribute the PNG image files of figures with the Info manuals, we should distribute the image files of @math with the manual, so that end users could display them without any additional packages (and LaTeX is quite a large package, what with all the fonts and macros it needs to do its job). So I think we need to generate the images when the Info manual is being produced, because that requires LaTeX etc. to be installed only on the system of the person who prepares the Info manual.
