Re: documentation format and html output --

[Hans-Bernhard B. <HBB...@t-...>]

Am 20.08.2015 um 23:29 schrieb Karl-Friedrich Ratzsch:
> Ah! Still it never used, can't be, because there is a bug in
> doc2tex, the link gets two closing brackets too many. I uploaded a fix:
> https://sourceforge.net/p/gnuplot/patches/719/#646e

I think I'll do my own fix ;-)

>> Why make such a major change, when every self-respecting
>> programmers' text editor can regex-search for, e.g., /^3/ ?

> Oh, I don't have so much respect for myself as a programmer.

You misinterpreted that statement.  It's the editor that's supposed to 
be self-respecting.  "Programmers' text editor" is a somewhat 
well-established tool category.  Note how the placement of the "'" makes 
a little difference :-)

> And you said nobody had an editor with syntax highlighting for the
> gnuplot docs. ;-)

Well, you were asking about syntax highlighting, so I answered that 
question.

If you had asked about navigating from node to node right away, you 
would got the answer about regexps in editors earlier.

> Still, i see no harm in adding an empty line before every heading.

Well, empty lines may have meaning, and may be passed through to some of 
the output formats.  They might create silly blank space at the end of 
pages / paragraphs.  That doesn't feel like a risk worth taking just to 
avoid typing something as easy as <Ctrl-Meta-s> ^ 3 or <ESC> <Ctrl-s> ^ 
3 (in Emacs) or / ^ 3 (in Vi)

;-P

And who's going to be making sure that those empty lines are 
consistently maintained in the future: you?  Will you get mad at others 
if they remove them, or if they forget to add new ones when they add new 
sections?

gnuplot.doc is newline-heavy enough as it is.  We don't need to spend 
even more screen real estate for empty lines.

> Which are indented much further. Ah! So the rule might better be
> "Plaintext tables get indented so as to at least leave a space in
> column 2."

No. The blank in column two is actually an active character.  It means 
"output this entire line verbatim" (for both LaTeX and plain text output).