Re: Help requested for Automake.

[Gavin Smith]

On 4 March 2017 at 05:03, carl hansen <address@hidden> wrote:
> h
>
> On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 1:37 PM, Mathieu Lirzin <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have recently updated the texinfo.tex distributed in Automake from
>> version 2013-02-01.11 to version 2017-01-14.15
>>
>> Unfortunately this had the consequence of making 2 tests of Automake test
>> suite fail.  The problems happen when calling texi2dvi and I fail to
>> parse the error messages.  That would be great if someone could help me
>> figure out what/where the problem is.
>>
> partial sol'n:
>
> in automake-micro/silent-texi.sh
>
>
> cat > foo.texi <<'EOF'
> \input texinfo
> @setfilename foo.info
> @settitle foo manual
> @bye
> EOF
>
> This doesn't actually produce foo.dvi
> But add some text, then it does produce foo.dvi:
>
>
> cat > foo.texi <<'EOF'
> \input texinfo
> @setfilename foo.info
> @settitle foo manual
> Here is some random  text.
> @bye
> EOF

It appears to be a side-effect of the change on 2015-08-25 which made
it so that index files were not opened automatically. Using the
command to open a file in TeX, \openout, caused a page to be output.
(The reason for this was that it counts as something on a page, so the
first page is not completely empty.)

The fix would be to put something on the page. Maybe like this?

Index: texinfo.tex
===================================================================
--- texinfo.tex (revision 7677)
+++ texinfo.tex (working copy)
@@ -11571,6 +11571,8 @@
  }
 }

address@hidden
+
 % If a .fmt file is being used, characters that might appear in a file
 % name cannot be active until we have parsed the command line.
 % So turn them off again, and have @fixbackslash turn them back on.

I thought of putting something inside @bye, but the problem is that
penalties and glue are discarded when the page is empty, and anything
else risks outputting a completely empty page at the end even when
non-empty pages have been output already.

If anyone sees a problem with the idea of starting out by always
outputting an empty @vbox on the page, please say so.