bug#41117: "Cut and paste" section name in bookmarks (PDF, Emacs manual)

[Eli Zaretskii]

Date: Thu, 7 May 2020 01:33:23 +0200
I'm not sure about it, because it's against convention of using
special case, which means it may be acceptable.

I don't understand the rationale, and the image is strange. I should
have seen curved quotes there in the OLD version. That's what I see
in the Info version.

[Sebastian Urban]

Post by Eli Zaretskii
I don't understand the rationale, and the image is strange. I
should have seen curved quotes there in the OLD version. That's
what I see in the Info version.

The image is screenshot of bookmarks panel. You probably won't see
curved quotes there because, I think, PDF bookmarks can't show these
glyphs. So, probably, it shows ASCII characters, i.e. ``...'' or
ASCII approximations.

Because in Emacs manual, in section "Quotation Marks", there are
presented two conventions for ASCII quotes - 'like this' and "like
this", I wanted to make it look more appropriate. And that's why I
chose to change in source ``...'' to “...” - everything will look as
it is now, except for name in PDF bookmarks panel, which will change
from ``Cut and Paste''... to "Cut and Paste"..., so closer to the
convention of ASCII style of quoting.


S. U.

[Eli Zaretskii]

Date: Thu, 7 May 2020 19:28:36 +0200
The image is screenshot of bookmarks panel. You probably won't see
curved quotes there because, I think, PDF bookmarks can't show these
glyphs. So, probably, it shows ASCII characters, i.e. ``...'' or
ASCII approximations.

Not my experience. I see curved quotes, AFAIR. But even if this
isn't true, the Texinfo sources of the Emacs manual is not the place
to fix it, this should be fixed in Texinfo.

Because in Emacs manual, in section "Quotation Marks", there are
presented two conventions for ASCII quotes - 'like this' and "like
this", I wanted to make it look more appropriate. And that's why I
chose to change in source ``...'' to “...” - everything will look as
it is now, except for name in PDF bookmarks panel, which will change
from ``Cut and Paste''... to "Cut and Paste"..., so closer to the
convention of ASCII style of quoting.

We use quoting ``..'' like this in Texinfo because this is supposed to
produce curved quotes, as printed quoted text is supposed to look. I
don't think it's right to change that because PDF looks wrong, it
isn't a problem with our manual.

Thanks.

[Sebastian Urban]

Post by Eli Zaretskii
Not my experience. I see curved quotes, AFAIR.

Strange, for official PDF updated for 26.3, Adobe Reader, SumatraPDF,
and Firefox's PDF reader, all show ``...'' instead of “...”, here.

Post by Eli Zaretskii
But even if this isn't true, the Texinfo sources of the Emacs manual
is not the place to fix it, this should be fixed in Texinfo.

If it's Texinfo problem, then yes. I just tried to fix it the
simplest way possible.

Post by Eli Zaretskii
We use quoting ``..'' like this in Texinfo because this is supposed to
produce curved quotes, as printed quoted text is supposed to look. I
don't think it's right to change that because PDF looks wrong, it
isn't a problem with our manual.

I'm aware of ``...'' as a default way of printing “...”, but - again -
I wanted to fix it and this small change did it. Because it wasn't in
the middle of paragraph, I thought it may be acceptable.

Since you don't want make any exceptions of this kind, I think I'm on
my way to "help-texinfo" mailing list. Could you keep this open for
few more days?


S. U.

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

I'm not sure about it, because it's against convention of using
special case, which means it may be acceptable.

Texinfo is supposed to handle `` and '' in section titles.

Can you report what commands you executed to get this output?
Where in the output file did you see the error?

[Eli Zaretskii]

Date: Thu, 7 May 2020 21:31:51 +0200
Since you don't want make any exceptions of this kind, I think I'm on
my way to "help-texinfo" mailing list. Could you keep this open for
few more days?

I didn't say I will close this. And even if I did close, reopening is
very simple, see admin/notes/bugtracker for the details.

[Sebastian Urban]

Post by Richard Stallman

I'm not sure about it, because it's against convention of using
special case, which means it may be acceptable.

Texinfo is supposed to handle `` and '' in section titles.

It does inside text, but not in PDF bookmarks pane/panel.

Post by Richard Stallman
Can you report what commands you executed to get this output?

"texi2pdf --tidy emacs.texi", but it doesn't matter, because the
problem is in the official Emacs manual PDF as well.

Post by Richard Stallman
Where in the output file did you see the error?

The easiest way to see it:
Open https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/pdf/emacs.pdf e.g. in
Firefox, then look at bookmarks on the left, "Killing and Moving Text"
---> "'Cut and Paste' Operations on Graphical Displays". You'll see
something like ``Cut and Paste" in the bookmarks panel.


S. U.

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Post by Eli Zaretskii
We use quoting ``..'' like this in Texinfo because this is supposed to
produce curved quotes, as printed quoted text is supposed to look.

That is the standard TeX convention. Texinfo, for making PDFs, is
based on TeX so Texinfo uses the same convention.

There is a project to replace Texinfo with a new input format.
(Unfortunately we can't use the other existing clean input formats,
because none of them can make all the distinctions we need to make.)
If you would like to be one of the developers, please let me know.

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Post by Sebastian Urban

Post by Richard Stallman
Texinfo is supposed to handle `` and '' in section titles.

It does inside text, but not in PDF bookmarks pane/panel.

It sounds like this is a bug in whatever program constructs
the PDF bookmarks pane/panel.

[Sebastian Urban]

Alright, back from Texinfo.

Thread link:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-texinfo/2020-05/msg00031.html

@chapter ``Some text'' and the rest of the @TeX{} text
The point is, when I export file to PDF (texi2pdf --tidy test.texi,
bookmarks) has ``Some text'', while I was hoping for “Some text”
(curved quotes).
@chapter “Some text” ....
("fix" in this case means getting "Some text" in the bookmarks, which
is at least ASCII style quoting convention, i.e. it's better)
but is there any way to stick to the ``..'' convention?

It would have to be implemented. The problem is that the PDF format
uses UTF-16 internally for the bookmarks, so using curly quotes here is
quite difficult. Hence we are stuck with ASCII in the bookmarks. I
guess that " is better than `` but this may also be difficult to
implement. `` is a ligature in the fonts used that is a curvy double
quote but the PDF bookmarks are completely separate - you'd need to
change the two tokens `` to something else somehow.
I'm not planning on working on this soon. It would be messy to

implement

and quotation marks in chapter titles are rare anyway.

So... can't we have one exception? As I wrote, it's in @section, so
it could be special case - one special case.


S. U.

[Eli Zaretskii]

Date: Thu, 14 May 2020 18:51:06 +0200

I'm not planning on working on this soon. It would be messy to

implement

and quotation marks in chapter titles are rare anyway.

it could be special case - one special case.

Sorry, no. I don't want to fix Texinfo problems in our sources,
especially since these problems are subtle and the "fix" looks plainly
wrong to Texinfo users. Someone will come later and delete it as a
mistake.

We will have to wait until Texinfo fixes this.

[Sebastian Urban]

Post by Eli Zaretskii
Sorry, no. I don't want to fix Texinfo problems in our sources,
especially since these problems are subtle and the "fix" looks plainly
wrong to Texinfo users. Someone will come later and delete it as a
mistake.
We will have to wait until Texinfo fixes this.

OK.

I guess this bug can remain open until fix for Texinfo arrive
somewhere in the future. But if you want another report in the
future, because it may take some time, feel free to close this one.


S. U.

[Stefan Kangas]

Post by Sebastian Urban

Post by Eli Zaretskii
Sorry, no. I don't want to fix Texinfo problems in our sources,
especially since these problems are subtle and the "fix" looks plainly
wrong to Texinfo users. Someone will come later and delete it as a
mistake.
We will have to wait until Texinfo fixes this.

OK.
I guess this bug can remain open until fix for Texinfo arrive
somewhere in the future. But if you want another report in the
future, because it may take some time, feel free to close this one.

It's enough that texinfo tracks this bug on their end, so I'm closing
this bug report.

Thanks for reporting the bug to the texinfo maintainers.