() k...@freefriends.org (Karl Berry) () Thu, 13 Sep 2012 22:36:39 GMT The sooner makeinfo supports uniform pass-through specification, the sooner it can remove itself from the style-wishlist treadmill.
Texinfo has never been on that treadmill and never will be, because it is not and never will be a goal to support output in any conceivable style/format/whatever desired. I agree completely. The suggestion is a way to never start on the user-constructed (wishlist) treadmill by providing the minimal (partial) support necessary to at least be neighborly about it. At the moment, if i want to both use texinfo and attach a note to the first example, i need to do: 0. write doc.texi w/ comment: @c NB: ATTRIBUTES (hey "don't take things too seriously") @example 42 @end example 1. produce doc.sxml from doc.xml from doc.texi 2. process doc.sxml to "manually" associate attributes, changing (comment "NB: ATTRIBUTES (hey \"don't take things too seriously\")") (example (@ (xml:space "preserve")) "42") to (example (@ (xml:space "preserve") (hey "don't take things too seriously")) "42") and producing doc-ready.sxml 3. produce output from, or distribute directly, doc-ready.sxml Step 2 requires me to - define attribute syntax and association convention (actually step -1); - recognize the association instance (i.e., distinguish it from non-convention comment-example sequences); - parse the specified attributes, handling any syntax errors; - merge them w/ the ‘example’ attributes. This is work i would do[0], but not gladly, knowing that everyone else who has similar desires must also do something similar, but most likely different enough to prevent interop. In short, ad-hoc hell. Put another way, Texinfo is not and has never been (La)TeX (much less XML). I think it would be quite wrong (and quite difficult) to add features such as you describe. Sorry. OK, no worries. ______________________________ [0] and am (slowly) doing, actually, in a related effort to "define a new file format (.info2) that's more friendly (in various ways) to rendering programs" -- Thien-Thi Nguyen ..................................... GPG key: 4C807502 . NB: ttn at glug dot org is not me . . (and has not been since 2007 or so) . . ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES . ........... please send technical questions to mailing lists ...........
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