Re: [PATCH] Port GCC documentation to Sphinx

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Cc: joseph@codesourcery.com, gcc@gcc.gnu.org, gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org
> From: Martin Liška <mliska@suse.cz>
> Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2021 18:04:24 +0200
> 
> > Emacs doesn't hide the period.  But there shouldn't be a period to
> > begin with, since it's the middle of a sentence.  The correct way of
> > writing this in Texinfo is to have some punctuation: a comma or a
> > semi-colon, after the closing brace, like this:
> > 
> >    This is the warning level of @ref{e,,-Wshift-overflow3}, and …
> 
> I don't see why we should put a comma after an option reference.

You explained it yourself later on:

> It's all related to Texinfo. Sphinx generates e.g.
> Enabled by @ref{7,,-Wall} and something else.
> 
> as documented here:
> https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/_0040ref.html
> 
> Then it ends with the following info output:
> 
>       Enabled by *note -Wall: 7. and something else.
> 
> So the period is added by Texinfo. If I put comma after a reference, then
> the period is not added there.
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So the purpose of having the comma there is to avoid having a period
in the middle of a sentence, which is added by makeinfo (because the
Info readers need that).  Having a comma there may seem a bit
redundant, but having a period will definitely look like a typo, if
not confuse the heck out of the reader, especially if you want to use
these inline cross-references so massively.

> > I don't think the GCC manuals should necessarily be bound by the
> > Sphinx standards.  Where those standards are sub-optimal, it is
> > perfectly okay for GCC (and other projects) to deviate.  GCC and other
> > GNU manuals used a certain style and convention for decades, so
> > there's more than enough experience and tradition to build on.
> 
> What type of conversions and style are going to change with conversion to Sphinx?

Anything that is different from the style conventions described in the
Texinfo manual.  We have many such conventions.

> Do you see any of them worse than what we have now?

I didn't bother reading the Sphinx guidelines yet, and don't know when
(and if) I will have time for that.  I do think the comparison should
be part of the job or moving to Sphinx.

> > I will no longer pursue this point, but let me just say that I
> > consider it a mistake to throw away all the experience collected using
> > Texinfo just because Sphinx folks have other traditions and
> > conventions.  It might be throwing the baby with the bathwater.
> > 
> 
> Again, please show up concrete examples. What you describe is very theoretical.

We've already seen one: the style of writing inline cross-references
with the equivalent of @ref.  We also saw another: the way you
converted the menus.  It is quite clear to me that there will be
others.  So I'm not sure why you need more evidence that this could be
a real issue.

But maybe all of this is intentional: maybe the GCC project
consciously and deliberately decided to move away of the GNU
documentation style and conventions, and replace them with whatever
the Sphinx and RST conventions are?  In that case, there's no reason
for me to even mention these aspects.