Re: info goto node with dot

[Norbert Preining]

Hi Karl!

Good to hear from you, hope you are doing well in the new year!

On Don, 26 Jan 2006, Karl Berry wrote:
>     146133 and 151850       Matching vs. Searching
>     ----------------------------------------------
>     If you take a info file which is split into different files, and there
>     is a node containing a `.', jumping to this node does not work.
>     I checked this with 4.8 and it is still present there.
>     (I have a rather long example here, if you want I send it to you)
> 
> In my tests, splitting into different files doesn't matter.  For
> instance, the a2ps, gettext, and cvs manuals have node names containing
> "." in subfiles, and (oddly enough) both standalone info and emacs could
> find them.

Hmmm, well then I don't see very there is a real problem. It seems that
the generation of the info files, especially with the jump indications
at the end of the first file, are improperly created. WOuldn't this
explain the problem?

> 
>     Here we have some very strange problem: I don't know wether you are
>     interested in taking a look at this. The problem is that the *INFO*
>     files are *generated* from html pages, not via texi files. THe actual
>     road is:
>             TeX Document -> latex2html -> HTML Document -> python script
>                     -> info files
> 
>     I assume that the generation of the info files contains a bug.
> 
> I don't see anything obviously wrong in those (python2.1-lib) info
> files, so unfortunately I can't quickly blame the info generation code :).

Maybe it is something hard to be seen, namley in the stuff at the end of
the first file. That's why I said it is necessary to have more files. I
am not a pro on info format, how everything is stored, but as far as I
see at the end of the first file there is a binary blob giving
information on where one has to jump to in the other files. True???
And if this is wrongly generated, it would explain why it doesn't work.

> The only idea that comes to my mind is that perhaps it's because the
> *filename* also contains a "." (the "2.1").  Can you try making the
> python docs without that dot, and/or making a test file with a dot, and
> see what happens?

I will do and report back.

> Clearly there is some difference, but bugs in standalone info are the
> lowest priority for me.  Furthermore, node names are also documented not
> to contain "." -- although this is a ridiculous restriction, it is one
> of long standing, and it's not easy to fix in full generality.

Ok, so we are down to some points:
* I try to pin it down on the filename containing a .
* If it is like this, I downgrade this bug to whishloist: Please allow
  a "." in node names, and if you come around in the next 30 years, it's
  ok ;-)

> So unless some lightning strikes or another developer appears, I can't
> hold out a lot of hope on this one, sorry ...

No problem with this.

Something related: The most puzzling, even for me, error/bug/strangeness
is that info jumps to the man page of "top" when you enter
        info ./notexistingfile
instead of going to the top node or giving an error message ;-)

Best wishes

Norbert

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Dr. Norbert Preining <preining AT logic DOT at>             Università di Siena
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