Re: [help-texinfo] Need help with texinfo (beginner inside)

[Nicolas]

On Mon, Oct 23, 2006 at 04:49:46PM -0500, Karl Berry wrote:
> Hi Nicolas,
> 
>     We're still hesitating between working on that texinfo file or
>     converting it to Latex.
> 
> I would encourage you to keep it in Texinfo, because (a) that will make
> it easier for you to import changes in the "official" manual, and (b) it
> is lot easier to generate decent html (and plain text and info and xml) from
> Texinfo than from LaTeX, and no harder to generate pdf.
> 
>     - I can't get ride of the empty lines after each @item in the .pdf
>       document
> 
> Are you talking about the bullets appearing on lines by themselves, for
> instance the
>   *
>     Foreign language translations ...
> on page 5?  If so, the problem is in the input file.  There should be no
> blank line after the item command.
> 
> By the way, that would be better written using @table anyway.  Then the
> text for the item should be on the same line as the @item.
> @table @b
> @item Foreign language translations
> These go into /usr/share/locale.
> 
> (And you should use @file for file names.)
> 
>     - I would like to reduce the margin on each side of the document in the
>       .pdf, but I can't find the setting to modify
> 
> There is no direct command for setting margins, but I surmise you are in
> Europe.  Does adding
> @afourpaper
> near the beginning of the doc (say, after the @settitle) make you
> happier?
> 
> Best,
> Karl

Karl,

Thank you very much for your very quick reply. Thanks to your help, I
solved the problems with the bullets and the margin.

There seems to be a lot of problems with the .texi file I work on.
However, I really hope we'll get them solved and will be able to work on
the texinfo file instead of converting it to latex (latex's syntax seems
to be more complicated, and I would avoid having to use a graphical
WYSIWYM application).

Here's what I get now:
http://www.europephoto.com/info/cinelerra/200610/20061023_2_cinelerra_texi.tgz

As you can see in the pdf, there's a problem with the contents table.
I'm RTFM'ing right now, but if you have an idea while I continue to read
the manual, you're welcome. ;-)

I also have a problem with the images. Originally, they are .png images.
I converted them to eps and then to pdf using those commands:
for a in *.png; do convert $a small/$a.eps; done
cd small
for f in *.eps; do ps2pdf $f; done

In the original .texi file, their size isn't indicated in the @image
tag. If I put 10mm, they appear as very small images (1 or 2 pixels on
my 19" monitor). I set 100mm for the magnify.pdf file on page 15. Look
at lines 1068 and 1069 in the .texi file. The magnify image is now at
the good size. However, the wrench image (10mm x 10mm) is very small!
Moreover, the magnify image messes the layout of the page... :-/

I've read in the manual something about the @noident tag. Must I use
that to avoid messing the layout?
Or is there a problem with the .pdf files I generate out of the .png
images? I have to convert them to .pdf in order to use the texi2pdf
program. I don't know if there's another way to do that. I put the
magnify.* files in the archive.

What's your opinion?

Thank you very much! =)

Nicolas.