Karl Berry wrote: > Well, whether it's the right choice is arguable, but they > do intentionally switch to normal slanted/italic. The > theory is that specifying metavariables and/or emphasizing > text inside code examples doesn't really make sense. > > What is your example actually about? Would @kbd be > appropriate? It uses typewriter slanted (by default) > inside @example. > > By the way, what manual are you working on? I'm just > curious. New Texinfo bug reporters don't come along that > often :).
I'm working on the LilyPond manual. Here's the actual example in html (spacing is good): http://kainhofer.com/~lilypond/Documentation/contributor/generating-documentation.html ...and in pdf (spacing is bad), page 38 of 110 (p.31 of the main text): http://kainhofer.com/~lilypond/Documentation/contributor.pdf The "X" in "-jX" and "CPU_COUNT=X" is what is being slanted with @var. Actually, the problem is a little more interesting than you're implying. The slanted type is still monospace, and the slanted characters occupy the same space as the non-slanted ones... But space is being added to the right of each @var block. Here's a file to demonstrate: ____________________ Lines 1 and 3 are reference lines with no formatting. All four lines have the same number of characters. The vertical bars (|) at the end of each line should all line up. Line 2 has one @code{@@var} block; line 4 has 20 @code{@@var} blocks. Clearly, the slanted characters are not any wider than normal. Instead, it seems that some extra (unwanted) space is being added to the right of each @code{@@var} block. Using @code{@@emph} produces the same results. @example 1) 123456789012345678901234567890123456789 | 2) @var{123456789012345678901234567890123456789} | 3) 1 3 5 7 9 1 3 5 7 9 1 3 5 7 9 1 3 5 7 9 | 4) @var{1} @var{3} @var{5} @var{7} @var{9}@ @var{1} @var{3} @var{5} @var{7} @var{9}@ @var{1} @var{3} @var{5} @var{7} @var{9}@ @var{1} @var{3} @var{5} @var{7} @var{9} | @end example ____________________ The @kbd command behaves as you suggest, so I suppose I can use that instead. But do you agree that the extra space with @var and @emph is undesirable? Perhaps this is an intentional feature to give some "breathing room" to italicized words in non-monospace text. If so, I propose selectively disabling it for monospace blocks like @example, @code, etc. What do you think? Thanks! - Mark
