Re: another serious `texi2dvi -E' bug

[Karl Berry]

      -P foo
      --preprocess-file=foo

Yes.  With a configurable preprocessor.

In fact I was thinking, along the lines of the other thread, that maybe
the best macro solution is to make it convenient to preprocess Texinfo
documents with m4, which will surely support macros better than Texinfo
ever will.

    The ideal fix of course is to get rid of the `sed' kludge in texi2dvi,

Yes.  I hate that kludge.  I've always hated it.  It is nothing but
trouble.  I should never have agreed to implement macros that way (rms
and bfox were pushing me hard about it and I caved).

    An alternative (and perhaps easier to implement) is to make option
    `-E' act as my proposed --only-ifformat option.  

I see that you already implemented it, but I admit I'm not crazy about
this approach.

    However, this is not backwards compatible...

Ordinarily I try very hard to preserve backwards compatibility, but in
this case I don't think it's a problem: a document would both have to
use @FORMAT (very few day) *and* macros (very few do, in any nontrivial
way) *and* rely on macro expansion within the @FORMAT -- I suspect the
intersection of all that is the empty set.

However, if we can avoid the whole issue in some other way, such as
using m4, so much the better.

karl