Re: Texinfo -> HTML issues

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Aubrey Jaffer <address@hidden>
> Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 14:06:18 -0400 (EDT)
> 
>   makeinfo --html -o ~/public_html/devel/scm scm/scm.texi
>   makeinfo --html --no-split -o ~/public_html/devel/slib.html slib/slib.texi
> 
> ~/public_html/devel/scm/Time.html has the reference:
> 
>   See <a href="../slib/Time-and-Date.html#Time-and-Date">current-time 
> (SLIB)</a>.
> 
> >From which I get the message:
> 
>   Object not found!
>   ....
>   Error 404
> 
> "slib/Time-and-Date.html" doesn't exist because slib was compiled with
> --no-split.
> 
> So the --no-split references and the split references which makeinfo
> produces are not compatible.

Oops!  Sorry, I was sure this worked.  Perhaps it did at one time, and
became broken, or maybe I was just dreaming...

Karl, can this be fixed?  I think this is a bug (assuming that the
other manuals are produced with the same splitting option as the one
we are running through makeinfo).

> Your "cross-document references will not be reliable" argument does
> not justify the current node->filename translation because it does
> not accomplish that goal.

Well, ideally, it should.

> My ambition is to simplify that process so that people can figure it
> in their heads.  Something like:
> 
>  The filename is the same as the nodename except for these
>  substitutions:
> 
>  "/" ==> ".slash."
>  ":" ==> ".colon."

There are more than these characters, unfortunately.

>  "@" ==> ""

You mean, just delete @ as if it were not there?

>  | whose particulars depend on the underlying filesystem, a user
> 
> These HTML files are web pages.

Not necessarily: some people keep them on their local machines because
they like HTML docs better.

> If the underlying filesystem is exposed by these filenames, then
> "cross-document references will not be reliable."

They will be reliable as long as they were produced on the same OS.

> I regularly produce HTML files on GNU/Linux for use on lesser
> operating systems.  Is there an makeinfo option to case-fold HTML
> filenames?

No (but only because no one has written the code).  For now, you need
to generate the files on the same OS; on those systems where file
names are case-insensitive, makeinfo does TRT.  Or you could generate
the files on the system with most problems, and then they will work on
more (or even all) systems.

> Congratulations, you have just made a circular argument:

Look, we can argue like that till Kingdom Come, especially since I
sometimes don't read my mail for days and forget the issues.  The
important point is that the current code was not some random hack, it
came into existence after a lot of discussions and it tries to solve
some very real problems.  If you are going to keep the attitude that
the current solutions are plain stupid and that by just attacking the
stupidity, better solutions will magically materialize themselves,
then we will never come to anything constructive.

If you want to help us find better solutions, please make a point of
learning the problems and the code, and suggesting specific solutions.

TIA