[texinfo-pretest] conditional macros problem

[Werner LEMBERG]

> @newmacro @mymac {
> line1
> line2
> @quotation
> whatever
> @end quotation
> }
> 
> The problem is that commands like @quotation are delimited by an ^^M
> char, so ^^M will have to be active when the @newmacro definition is
> read.  But ^^M shouldn't always mean a new line, of course -- e.g.,
> the one after line1.  I'm not sure exactly what the implications
> are, but I doubt it will be fun.

What do you think about having two macros, say, @NewMacro and
@NewMacroWithActiveNewline to handle those issues in a clean way?

> Usual Texinfo convention is the stupid comma separation, as in
> @bigmac{actual1,actual2,actual3}.  This is not easily parsable with
> TeX, but we definitely want to use TeX's builtin argument parsing or
> we'll be nearly as bad off as we are now.  The closest we can come
> is delimited args:
> @newmacro @bigmac @arg1, at arg2, at arg3{...whatever...}

Ugly.  Why not using TeX syntax directly?

  @newmacro @bigmac @arg1 @arg2 @arg3 { ... }

(or something similar) to be called as

  @bigmac{actual1}{actual2}{actual3}...


    Werner