Re: Missing info and dangling references on manual page "Preparing for TeX"

[Gavin Smith]

On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 09:57:15PM +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hello, Texinfo.
> 
> I'm reading the Texinfo manual version from version 6.6 (16th February
> 2019).
> 
> 1/- On page "Preparing for Texinfo", We have:
> 
>     TeX needs to know where to find the 'texinfo.tex' file that the
>     '\input texinfo' command on the first line reads.
> 
> There is then an absence of any direction on how to give TeX this
> information.  The paragraph continues with unrelated information.  This
> is disconcerting.

Thanks for the report; I agree it is confusing.

I have done some editing in commit b6e4b84.

> 3/- (A bit lower down still):
> 
>     If neither of the above locations for these system files suffice,
>     you can specify the directories explicitly.
> 
> There are no "above locations" in this page that I can see.  Is this a
> hangover from some reorganisation of the page which removed these "above
> locations"?

In old Texinfo releases (before 6.0) I found this text was present:

Usually, the installer has put the @file{texinfo.tex} file in the
default directory that contains @TeX{} macros when GNU Texinfo, Emacs or
other GNU software is installed.  In this case, @TeX{} will find the
file and you do not need to do anything special.  If this has not been
done, you can put @file{texinfo.tex} in the current directory when you
run @TeX{}, and @TeX{} will find it there.

Even with that text, it wasn't very clear.

I tracked it down to (what is now) revision 95f1ebadc, which was a 
general edit of this part of the manual.