[texinfo-pretest] Project: texi2latex

[Patrice Dumas]

> This does not make sense to me unless makeinfo actually acquires a latex
> backend.  I would find it very weird to document "ok, there's @latex,
> but it's only for the benefit of the XML output".

For the benefit of a latex backend, even though it happens that there is no 
makeinfo latex backend and that there the backend is a makeinfo --xml/xsl 
backend. But what's wrong with that? In my opinion there is a distinction
between the texinfo language and the implementation.

After all there is no tex backend in makeinfo. By the way as there is a roff
backend in texi2html (and also texi2roff although it is a bit out of date) 
there could be @roff, @ifroff and so on for any language available for
documentation which has a converter available.

> It should be possible to put the LaTeX commands into an @xml section, as
> you described in your other message.

That's not very intuituous either. It amounts to: to get raw latex, put it 
in an @xml section... 

In my opinion a better approach should be to put raw sections for the
documentation output foo in the xml output if there is a --iffoo together
with the --xml such that there is no loss of information.

In fact I believe (but maybe wrongly) that @if and raw regions should have been
included in the xml output of makeinfo from the beginning even though there 
is no --if... on the command line, such that the xml file is an almost exact 
translation of the texinfo file (with the exception of macros, of course). 
Still --ifno... could have removed those parts.

Pat