Re: Test file for texinfo.tex

[Karl Berry]

    doc/texinfo-tex-test.texi

Please add it to EXTRA_DIST in doc/Makefile.am (sorry if I missed it).

FWIW, I think separate files testing specific things is better than one
big test file.  (E.g., "tests/macro-backslash.texi" rather than
"texinfo-tex-test.texi".)  The trip test approach does not work for
anyone but Knuth.

ANyway ... I have hundreds of test files (not organized, not documented,
not anything -- essentially just the problems people have reported over
the decades; so I've never committed them anywhere).

The problem is that since there is no good way to create the reference
file, there's no practical way to know when something has broken.
Running without getting a TeX error is something, but not really that
much.  Most problems, backslash interpretation in macros aside, are
about what gets generated, rather than an actual TeX error.

I've extensively tried various ways of doing TeX tests (not just for
texinfo), such as comparing DVI or PDF output, comparing page images,
looking at the log files, etc.  None have been satisfactory enough to be
worth proceeding with.

For the record, one relatively recent entry in this area is the l3build
package, http://www.ctan.org/pkg/l3build (which supposedly works with
plain TeX too), which compares verbose *box* output (only) in the log
files.  That's an interesting approach.  I haven't tried that one.

k