Re: comma in @node or @float line

Stepan Kasal <[email protected]> Mon, 31 May 2004 14:22:50 +0200
Newsgroups gmane.comp.tex.texinfo.pretest
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Hi,

On Sun, May 30, 2004 at 05:23:58PM -0400, Karl Berry wrote:
>     > I think allowing certain commands in node names is a better approach.
>     As someone who did that, I think it's something to stay away of ;-)
> 
> I hear you, and believe me, I'm not looking forward to it, but I don't
> see a viable alternative to supporting languages other than English.
> 
> Although we need to support 8-bit characters too, I no longer think that
> would suffice, since many symbols would remain inaccessible.  Besides,
> 7-bit documents are often preferable for authors -- easier to mail
> around and everything else.

sorry if I'm repeating myself:

Don't bother thinking about @-accents as a mean to get texinfo used in
other languages.  Things are like this:

1) 8-bit input (ISO-8859-x or UTF-8) allows people to write texinfo docs
   in their native language
2) 7-bit plus @-accents is good for English authors to get the names of
   strangers right (like Dvo@v{r}@'ak)

The other combinations don't work: English people would probably have
problems to get right 8-bit code for @v{r}; and eg. Czech author wouldn't
use the "@v{r}" any more.[1]

There is a hypothetical possibility to write eg. Czech manual in UTF-8 and
then preprocess it to get 7-bit input for texinfo but I don't think anyone
would choose that; there are definitly more convenient possibilities.

So please when you think about these two, assign them priorities according
to this.

Good luck,
	Stepan Kasal

[1] We used to write \v{r} happily (or at least preproscessed our TeX
    sources in the times when laser printers were rare in Czech Republic
    and when the drivers for dot printers in Windows and other programs
    were really silly.
    In those times, we were glad for Eberhard Mattes' drivers in emTeX
    and were willing to work hard to get such an impressive output.
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