Re: [help-texinfo] Changing background color of the 'verbatim' environment

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

() address@hidden (Karl Berry)
() Thu, 13 Sep 2012 22:36:39 GMT

       The sooner makeinfo supports uniform pass-through specification,
       the sooner it can remove itself from the style-wishlist
       treadmill.

   Texinfo has never been on that treadmill and never will be, because
   it is not and never will be a goal to support output in any
   conceivable style/format/whatever desired.

I agree completely.  The suggestion is a way to never start on the
user-constructed (wishlist) treadmill by providing the minimal (partial)
support necessary to at least be neighborly about it.  At the moment, if
i want to both use texinfo and attach a note to the first example, i
need to do:

0. write doc.texi w/ comment:
   @c NB: ATTRIBUTES (hey "don't take things too seriously")
   @example
   42
   @end example

1. produce doc.sxml from doc.xml from doc.texi

2. process doc.sxml to "manually" associate attributes,
   changing

   (comment "NB: ATTRIBUTES (hey \"don't take things too seriously\")")
   (example
     (@ (xml:space "preserve"))
     "42")

   to 

   (example
     (@ (xml:space "preserve")
        (hey "don't take things too seriously"))
     "42")

   and producing doc-ready.sxml

3. produce output from, or distribute directly, doc-ready.sxml

Step 2 requires me to
- define attribute syntax and association convention (actually step -1);
- recognize the association instance (i.e., distinguish it from
  non-convention comment-example sequences);
- parse the specified attributes, handling any syntax errors;
- merge them w/ the ‘example’ attributes.

This is work i would do[0], but not gladly, knowing that everyone else
who has similar desires must also do something similar, but most likely
different enough to prevent interop.  In short, ad-hoc hell.

   Put another way, Texinfo is not and has never been (La)TeX (much less
   XML).

   I think it would be quite wrong (and quite difficult) to add features
   such as you describe.  Sorry.

OK, no worries.

______________________________
[0] and am (slowly) doing, actually, in a related effort to "define a
    new file format (.info2) that's more friendly (in various ways) to
    rendering programs"

-- 
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                         .
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