Re: inforef

[Luc Teirlinck]

Karl Berry wrote:

   I don't think this was ever the intent.  Whether a manual was ever
   published, i.e., available in a bookstore somewhere, seems unimportant
   to me as far as cross references go.

Except that a reference is useless if you give the user no indication
whatsoever on how to find that reference.

The reason Info files refer to Info files and HTML files to HTML
files, is that clicking on a link leads you to a file of that type, so
they are (if present) the most easily accessible forms of the file.
The problem with hardcopy is that you can not click on a link to
produce the printed manual referred to.

Consider a beginning user reading the published version of the Emacs
manual and seeing a reference to the "Emacs MIME Manual".  How is that
user to know that this refers to a .texi file to be found and printed
off by the user himself?  There is not the slightest indication of
that.  The Emacs manual explains how to read Info files using `C-h i',
but is silent about .texi files, where to find them and how to print
them off.  It never mentions texi2dvi.  The fact that the user has
access to the .info files does not even imply that he has access to
the .texi files.  So that user might first look at the last page to
see whether he can order the manual from the FSF, but it is not on
there.  His local bookstore can not help him either.  Thus, an
@inforef seems much less confusing and much more helpful to the user.

In as far as the example we started from (in the emacs-devel thread
leading up to this one), url.texi, I have no problem whatsoever
replacing the @inforef with an @xref.  There is no "published" version
of the URL manual, so the person who got the printed version either
knows himself how to find .texi files and print them off, or got them
from somebody who knows and could explain it to him.  The situation is
not as simple for the @inforef's in the Emacs manual.

Sincerely,

Luc.