Re: [help-texinfo] Problem with macros in displays

[Karl Berry]

Hi Laurence,

    I don't want inter-paragraph spacing to be reduced, so I
    don't really want to use address@hidden'.  

>From looking at the code and from experimentation, this
statement in the manual is wrong.  I'm deleting it.

    @macro syntax {arg}
    @iftex

Did you try putting the conditional outside the macro?  As in:
@iftex
@macro syntax ...
...
@end macro
@end iftex

@ifnottex
@macro syntax ...
...
@end macro
@end ifnottex

I am kind of surprised that conditionals worked inside the @macro at all.

    $\\langle$\\rm{\arg\\\/}$\\rangle$%

BTW, the predefined command @var is exactly for metasyntactic variables.
On the other hand, of course I know it's traditional to use <foo> for
BNF, especially when following existing books like Knuth.  Maybe we
should have @metavar or @bnfvar or something.  It would be easy to do,
and this isn't the first time it's come up.

    The problem is lots of erroneous line breaks.  However, they aren't
    just at the ends of input lines.

If lines are long enough, they will get broken.  The only solution is to
reduce the text on a line, or the font size.  @smalldisplay?

    The text in question isn't a quotation, and I'd like it to be in a display.

The command names are not strict.  Just pretend they are named foo and
bar instead :).

The only significant difference is that @quotation does normal line
breaking, and @display does line-for-line output.

    If you want to see what I come up with for any reason, I'll be happy
    to post it to one or both of these lists,

Always interested in how people are using Texinfo so yes, please send
away.

    By the way, which is the appropriate list for this discussion,
    `bug-texinfo' or `help-texinfo'?

In this case, either would be fine.  In general, bug-texinfo is for
reporting actual bugs (like the @macro behavior you observed) or
requesting enhancements, and help-texinfo is for "how do I do this".

There's no particular reason to send to both, though.  It's mostly the
same people on both lists.  I've reduced the followups here to just
bug-texinfo.

BTW, somehow I had thought you hadn't converted the 3DLDF manual to
Texinfo, because of all the math?  (Which Texinfo cannot handle easily.)
But I guess you have now?  Congratulations, that must have been a lot of
work.

Happy documenting,
karl