Re: m4 lines handled everywhere?

[Patrice Dumas]

On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 09:52:09PM +0000, Karl Berry wrote:
> it will cause more problem than it solves.  The whole point is for
> people to use m4 or whatever; m4 is not going to know when something is
> in verbatim, and indeed, it is pretty plausible that those are exactly
> the kind of places where m4 macros might be most useful.

Agreed.

> Of course, it should only be recognized if it exactly matches the
> necessary syntax.  See the Line Control node in cpp.texi.  Basically:
> ^\s*#\s*(line)? \d+ "[^"]+"(\s+\d+)*

Ok, I'll use that.

> Alternatively, we could disable the #-processing by default.  That would
> be safer, but, it seems to me, potentially less useful since it would
> mean another step for anyone wanting to use m4.
> 
> Wdyt?

I think that it should be enabled in the default case.  Then people could
use something like

@w{}#line aaa.h


As to how to disable it, I think it depends on what TeX would do with the 
lines directives.  If it does something (even if only ignoring them), then 
it would really makes sense to have an @-command like

  @cpplinedirectives on/off

If TeX do not do anything I still think that it would be a good idee to have
such an @-command.

Wdyt?

-- 
Pat