[Gretl-users] Re: searching for underscores in PDF help documents
On Tue, Nov 12, 2024 at 7:28 AM Sven Schreiber
<sven.schreiber(a)fu-berlin.de> wrote:
Hi all,
why can I sometimes search successfully for underscore characters in
some of the PDF help documents related to gretl , and sometimes not? Or
actually, my hypothesis is that it has to do with how the LaTeX
formatting is done at the source. And so the real question is, how can
we (as the doc authors) make sure that searching is possible?
Example: In the gretl user guide, I enter the search term "eviews_", and
I find the URL in footnote 1 on p. 18 (A4 version). Also, in the help
for the "gig" addon, searching for "gig_set_dist", I get two hits
within
the main body. However, the occurrence in the appendix of the same
document isn't found. This is a bit unfortunate.
In gig.tex, the instances of "gig_set_dist" that are found by the PDF
reader occur in verbatim blocks, where the source text literally
contains "g_" and "t_". The instance in the appendix is not in a
verbatim block, it's in a \texttt{...} expression where underscore
requires escaping, so the source actually contains "gig\_set\_dist".
I guess the only way to ensure that all terms containing underscore
are searchable would be: always mark them as verbatim and eliminate
the backslash.
Allin