() [email protected] (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"
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