[help-texinfo] IXIN 1.8 available

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

release notes:

  Big news is that settings / tweaks vetting is finally in, resulting in
  some small adjustments to the specification.  In the end, we stuck w/
  the two separate areas (as SETTINGS in META, and as TWEAKS in each
  NODE-INDEX entry) instead of adding a completely new block, but that
  change is still a possibility.

  On the rendering side, spit.el now shows what settings/tweaks "would
  be in effect" w/o actually taking action on those values.  Shirking,
  still (spit.el does not yet actually render w/ shr.el, either)!

  We're now surfing w/ Texinfo 4.13.97 (released a few days ago), too.
  Still a few bumps to smooth out, but overall feeling pretty good.

  thi

README excerpt:

  IXIN is an EXPERIMENTAL distribution of EXPERIMENTAL code and
  some pre-built IXIN files.  IXIN stands for "indexed texinfo".

  All code is under GPLv3+.  All (.xml) docs are under GFDL.

  ‘spec/ixin.texi’ is The IXIN Chronicles, a document that
  defines the file format and provides related info.  There
  are various output formats, including .info, .pdf and .ixin.

  ‘c/’ contains some simple command-line utilities to write and
  read the file format, and a proof-of-concept rendering program.

  ‘d/’ contains the some pre-built .sxml and .ixin files.
  ‘d/GNUmakefile’ supports "make demo" and "make demo-zow",
  among other commands.

NEWS excerpt:

  - 1.8 | 2013-02-16

    - bugfixes

      - mkixin records blob lengths individually, not cumulatively

        Before, for two blobs of lengths A and B, BLOBS-INDEX would
        record lengths A and A+B.

      - spit.el command docstrings in the right place

        Previously, docstrings followed the ‘interactive’ form, and thus
        were invisible to the help system.  Ugh, brain fade deluxe.

    - BLOBS-INDEX entry TYPE destructured

        This used to be a simple symbol, e.g., ‘image/png’.  Now, it is
        a list of the form: (MAJOR MINOR [ATTRIBUTES]), where ATTRIBUTES
        is a plist (alternating sequence of symbol NAME and string VALUE
        pairs).  Examples:

          (image png)
          (image jpeg)
          (image svg+xml charset "US-ASCII")

    - blobs specified to be unique

        Multiple @image to the same file should produce one blob, w/ the
        the same ixcc position.

    - support for makeinfo 4.13 dropped

        The utility mkixin exits errorfully if the input SXML appears to
        be from makeinfo 4.13 or earlier.  Likewise (and before), the
        utility a1-nf3-mixp exits failurefully if the input XML declares
        its DTD to be V4.13.  That DTD is no longer distributed.

        Also, d/prob.{xml,sxml,ixin} and spec/z4.{README,xml,sxml,ixin}
        have been removed.  Thus, all .xml is from makeinfo 4.13.93,
        now.

    - SETTINGS / TWEAKS can have zero or multiple VALUEs

        Previously, SETTINGS (in META) and TWEAKS (in each NODE-INDEX
        entry) had the form:

          (NAME VALUE)

        Now they have the form:

          (NAME [VALUE...])

        That is, there may be zero or multiple VALUEs.  Accordingly,
        these settings now have a more precise specification:

          novalidate
          everyheading
          everyfooting
          pagesizes

    - new type: ‘real’

        This is primarily to support the ‘pagesizes’ setting.

    - ‘pagesizes’ uses ‘real’ instead of ‘integer’

        For instance, this allows a VALUE of ‘(22.2 cm)’.

    - texinfo.tex redistributed

        This is from Texinfo 4.13.97, in subdir spec/.

    - images detected in META

        See the title and copyright pages of The IXIN Chronicles, for
        instance.  Note that due to blobs uniqueness (see above), the
        five displayed images (one on title page, three on copyright
        page, one in Introduction) are saved as two in ixin.ixin.

    - release notes included in The IXIN Chronicles

        This narcicisim is actually to test various changes in settings
        (e.g., address@hidden), or so we tell ourselves...

    - new element: ‘(ixset (@ (serial "N")))’

        In the node data, tweaks are replaced with the element ‘ixset’
        with attribute ‘serial’.  The attribute value N is the 0-based
        index into the corresponding node-index entry's TWEAKS list.

        For example, spec/ixin.texi uses address@hidden in node 37
        (aka "Release Notes").  This manifests as ‘(paragraphindent 0)’
        in the node index and ‘(ixset (@ (serial "0")))’ in the node
        data.  To see this, use commands:

          $ c/retrieve spec/ixin.ixin dump-index
          $ c/retrieve spec/ixin.ixin dump-node "Release Notes"

    - changes to spit.el

      - syntax table defined

        This is basically the Emacs Lisp syntax table, but with newline
        modified to be whitespace instead of endcomment.

      - structure highlighted / parens diminished

        In output for both ‘s’ and ‘M-m’, the SXML elements are now
        highlighted, and the surrounding parens deleted.  Empty SXML
        attribute lists are discarded, or represented as a single ‘-’
        (hyphen) should a child element begin on the same line (rare).
        Non-empty SXML attribute lists are highlighted, and the
        surrounding parens and initial address@hidden deleted.

      - ‘t’ bound to ‘toggle-truncate-lines’

        This makes it easier to switch attention from structure to
        content and back.

      - ‘s’ (aka ‘spit-%show’) also displays settings / tweaks

        If at node beginning (more precisely, prior to the start), there
        are settings or tweaks "in effect", these are now displayed
        ordered most recent to most past, with same-NAMEd past entries
        suppressed, one per line:

          NAME (N) [VALUE...]

        N, usually 1 but not always, is the count of VALUEs.
        The type of each VALUE depends on NAME.

        Note that you need to ‘M-m’ and ‘M-i’ to cache ‘settings’ and
        ‘tweaks’ so that they can be be "in effect".  For example, here
        is how a spit session for spec/ixin.ixin might go:

          s      ; see ‘Top’ w/o settings
          M-m    ; cache ‘settings’
          s      ; same, now w/ settings: document{language,encoding}
                 ;       headings, every{heading,footing}
          M-i    ; cache ‘tweaks’
          s      ; same as before (no tweaks yet in effect)
          6 * n  ; arrive at ‘Release Notes’
          s      ; similar to before (still no tweaks in effect)
          n      ; arrive at ‘Program and Doubt Index’
          s      ; see also ‘paragraphindent (1) asis’
          [      ; arrive at ‘version X.Y’
          s      ; see ‘paragraphindent (1) 0’

        Obviously a real (non-proof-of-concept) renderer would handle
        this caching transparently.

tarball, etc, in dir:

  http://www.gnuvola.org/software/ixin/

atom feed:

  http://www.gnuvola.org/NEWS.atom

-- 
Thien-Thi Nguyen ..................................... GPG key: 4C807502
.                  NB: ttn at glug dot org is not me                   .
.                 (and has not been since 2007 or so)                  .
.                        ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES                         .
........... please send technical questions to mailing lists ...........

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