Re: [PATCH] Update & announcement

[Graham Percival]

On Tue, Dec 08, 2009 at 07:23:01PM +0100, John Mandereau wrote:
> Le dimanche 06 décembre 2009 à 22:23 +0100, Harmath Dénes a écrit :
> > An example from macros.itexi:
> > 
> > @ifset bigpage
> > 
> > @macro rglos{TEXT}
> > @vindex \TEXT\
> > @ref{\TEXT\,,,music-glossary-big-page,Zenei fogalomtár}
> > @end macro
> > 
> > ...
> > 
> > @ifclear bigpage
> > 
> > @ifnotinfo
> > 
> > @macro rglos{TEXT}
> > @vindex \TEXT\
> > @ref{\TEXT\,,,music-glossary,Zenei fogalomtár}
> > @end macro
> > 
> > Apparently, only one argument of those macro calls differs. There
> > should be a way to eliminate the duplication of the other arguments.
> 
> We might be able to achieve this by defining macros that uses themselves
> macro definitions and/or @set.

Only if you accept responsibility for making it work in makeinfo,
texi2pdf, and texi2html.  This duplicates 10 or 20 commands in
macros.itexi.  That's one file.  When you change a manual name,
you need to update 4 lines of texinfo.

IMO, the "time saved" vs. "time spent"... including debugging any
fancy macro games in all the doc-building programs, including
debugging any problems that people with other versions of those
tools have... is totally not worth it.

> > @node Zene bevitele
> > @subsection Zene bevitele
> > @translationof Entering input
> 
> For LilyPond docs,
> many section titles are identical to their respective node names; I'll
> see about the possibility of defining a macro that would yield a @node
> and a section command with the same argument,

No.  Even if you had such a patch already written, I veto it.
- how are tools like emacs texinfo-all-menus-update supposed to
  play with the new macro?
- we'd lose internal consistency if we ever wanted to change the
  section name
- again, the benefit vs. time spent is totally not worth it.


Duplicating the node/section name is a basic feature of texinfo.
It's not a big deal.

Cheers,
- Graham