CR-LF line endings in Texinfo files (was texinfo-6.3.90 pretest)

[Gavin Smith]

On Sat, Apr 29, 2017 at 07:28:32PM +0100, Gavin Smith wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 29, 2017 at 11:25:44AM +0100, Gavin Smith wrote:
> > The test was introduced in SVN revision 5345 on 2013-08-27. I think
> > it is supposed to test that the CR characters are being ignored, but
> > they aren't in the macro definition, so this looks like a bug.
> 
> I've committed a change to convert any CR-LF line endings when the
> lines of an input file are read. Previously, they would be ignored
> in some circumstances, but they made a difference in others, causing
> this test failure. This should produce consistency with TeX programs
> that treat CR-LF as a line ending, as well.

On second thoughts, I think we should remove CR-LF line ending support
on GNU/Linux (or other Unix-style operating systems) altogether.

* Texinfo files with CR-LF line ending worked OK on Windows already, as
this test failure showed. This doesn't need to change.

* Texinfo files with CR-LF line ending didn't work reliably on 
GNU/Linux, so little would be lost by removing whatever support there 
was for it.

* Allowing CR-LF line endings on GNU/Linux (or whenever the file is
viewed as a string of bytes) makes the format of Texinfo input files
more complicated.  It would encourage more files to be produced with
these line endings.  Then the existence of these files would demand
that these line endings be supported forever.  On the other hand, only 
supporting one kind of line ending makes things simpler.

* Even if texi2any supported Texinfo files with CR-LF line endings, they
could cause problems when users use other tools (e.g. grep, or even
tools users wrote themselves).

* Only Windows uses CR-LF line endings (maybe there were other operating 
systems in the past that used these too, or other ways to separate 
lines, but they are irrelevant now).  It is contrary to the philosophy
of the GNU project to make changes that encourage the use of proprietary 
software like Microsoft Windows, especially if it makes support for
free operating systems harder (harder because it is more complicated).
(See e.g. https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Platforms.html#Platforms) 

* If a Texinfo file with CR-LF endings is transmitted to a system that
uses LF line endings, the line endings should be converted. If Windows
users like to have CR-LF line endings for their files, they can convert 
them the other way, and Texinfo on Windows will support them, I assume.

Note: Info files with CR-LF line endings should carry on being 
supported. on all operating systems.  This is about Texinfo files only.