makeinfo --html xref problem (spaces?)

[Joel Brobecker]

Hello everyone,

My name is Joel Brobecker, and I am one of the GNU maintainers for
the GDB project. I also try to help with maintaining the online
version of the various GDB Manuals, and someone remarked that cross
references in files generated by "makeinfo --html" are not working
For instance, if you go to:

    
http://www.sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb/Source-Path.html#Source-Path

And then, if you click on `set substitute-path', which is a link to:

    set-substitute_002dpath.html#set-substitute_002dpath

The page gets refreshed, and the URL now reads:

    
http://www.sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb/Source-Path.html#set%20substitute-path

But the browser did not scroll the page down to our definition.

I am using makeinfo from GNU texinfo version 4.13.

Looking further, we see that file `set-substitute_002dpath.html' only
contains what looks like a redirect:

    <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; 
url=Source-Path.html#set%20substitute%2dpath">

So, this explains why we get the URL we get when clicking on the link.

Searching for that anchor in Source-Path.html, it appears that its
name is actually:

    <a name="set-substitute_002dpath"></a>

If I correct the URL in set-substitute_002dpath.html to:

    url=Source-Path.html#set-substitute_002dpath

Then things seem to work, so it suggests two issues in the translation
of the anchor when generating the URL redirect:

    . A mismatch in the translation of spaces in anchor names (should
      be a '-' (hyphen);
    . A mismatch in the translation of hyphens, which apparently
      are translated as _002d.

Looking at the archives, it looks like someone reported a similar
problem:

    http://osdir.com/ml/bug-texinfo-gnu/2009-04/msg00032.html

And that email does suggest a transition to texi2html. But it looks
like there hasn't been a release with that tool. Any release planned
in the near future?

Thank you,
-- 
Joel