🚀 go-pugleaf

(apologies if you see this twice.  i haven't seen it here yet, and i
think that it was lost when the mail at prep got lost a day or two
ago, but our news server is sufficiently flaky that it's hard to be
sure.)

When formatting a texinfo file with texinfo-format-buffer, I have run
into problems where i have a table emphasized by @var which contains
@dots{} as items, such as 

@table @var
@item <tag>
@item PARENT
Or 1 if there isn't one.
@item LENGTH
Number of entries.
@item OBJ1
@item @dots{}
@item OBJLENGTH
@end table

When i am formatting this, i get an error message stating that @DOTS
isn't recognized, presumably because @var converts the @dots{} to
@DOTS{} which is then an invalid command.  I've fixed this problem by
adding the line

(put 'DOTS 'texinfo-format 'texinfo-format-dots)

to texinfmt.el, but that's hardy an optimal solution.  Mightn't it be
a better idea to have @var, etc. be a bit smarter and not try to
convert commands and arguments to commands?

Also, wouldn't it be better for texinfo.tex to define \asis by

\def\asis#1{{\rm #1}}

instead of

\def\asis#1{#1}

?  Sometimes i want to protect some text from the effect of a
surrounding command, and using asis would seem to be the cleanest way
to accomplish that.

(By the way, texinfo.tex doesn't have any such problems with nested
commands, or at least doesn't have this problem.  And i am using the
versions of these packages that came with emacs-18.56.)

david carlton
carlton@husc10.harvard.edu