Re: Export to Texinfo

[Nicolas Goaziou <n.goaziou@gmail.com>]

Hello,

Jonathan Leech-Pepin <jonathan.leechpepin@gmail.com> writes:

> Over the last few days I've been working on implementing an Org ->
> Texinfo exporter based on the new e-latex exporter.

Argh. While your idea is nice, starting from `e-latex' exporter is
almost certainly a bad move. Indeed, it is a quite convoluted back-end
which may not help to understand how the generic exporter can be used.

At some point I will have to write a tutorial on how to start a back-end
from scratch...

> It is not yet able to generate all the expected contents for export
> towards an Info file, however it does create enough to successfully
> export and read through Info.

You may want to get in touch with François Pinard (CC'ed), who had
started a similar project a few weeks ago.

> - There is no provision for indices, limiting usefulness in
>   cross-referencing.

Org export has some tools to handle cross-referencing even when the
back-end doesn't (ASCII exporter has it).

> - There is no #+attr_texinfo or #+TEXINFO: for arbitrary snippets or
>   for passing features to tables/blocks.  I'm not sure exactly how to
>   hook these in and would need a pointer in the right direction to do
>   so.

If you add #+ATTR_TEXINFO above an element, you can access its contents
with (org-element-property :attr_texinfo element).

Ideally parameters should be passed as a plist. I.e.

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
#+ATTR_TEXINFO: :width 5 :key "some value"
Some element
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

In that case, you can use `org-export-read-attribute' to
parse :attr_texinfo. I.e.

  (org-export-read-attribute :attr_texinfo element)

 will return

  '(:width 5 :key "some value")

You can then pick the property you want with `plist-get'... Seeing this,
I think I should add an optional argument to directly access a given
property. I.e.

  (org-export-read-attribute :attr_texinfo element :width) => 5

#+TEXINFO: keywords are automatically recognized as keywords. There is
nothing special to do. I.e.

  (defun org-e-texinfo-keyword (keyword contents info)
    (let ((key (org-element-property :key keyword))
          (value (org-element-property :value keyword)))
      (cond
       ...
       ((equal key "TEXINFO") value)      ; Return value as-is
       ...)))

Though, if you want to add support for #+BEGIN_TEXINFO/#+END_TEXINFO
blocks, you will have to add:

  (add-to-list 'org-element-block-name-alist
               '("TEXINFO" . org-element-export-block-parser))

> - The largest issue perhaps: There is no method to create @kbd{} and
>   @key{} commands on export.  If anyone has any suggestions how these
>   might be achieved (perhaps looking for a prefix in =code=?) I would
>   greatly appreciate it.

You can probably use export-snippets:

  An important key: @@e-info:@kbd{C-c C-c}@@.

> There are a few limitations to what will successfully be exported:
> - Headlines cannot contain any of the following symbols: periods,
>   commas, colons or parentheses.  This is a limitation of texinfo and
>   will result in errors when running makeinfo.  Semi-colons will
>   export however.

Can't you protect these chars?


Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Goaziou