Re: htmlxref.cnf vs. manual names with a dot

[Gavin Smith]

On Sat, May 04, 2019 at 03:26:34PM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> The Guix manual has this bit of text:
> 
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> This manual is also available in Simplified Chinese (@pxref{Top,,, guix.zh_CN,
> GNU Guix参考手册}), French (@pxref{Top,,, guix.fr, Manuel de référence de GNU
> Guix}), German (@pxref{Top,,, guix.de, Referenzhandbuch zu GNU Guix}), and
> Spanish (@pxref{Top,,, guix.es, Manual de referencia de GNU Guix}).
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
> 
> and ‘htmlxref.cnf’ contains these lines:
> 
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> guix.de               mono    ${GS}/guix/manual/de/guix.html
> guix.de               node    ${GS}/guix/manual/de/html_node/
> guix.es               mono    ${GS}/guix/manual/es/guix.html
> guix.es               node    ${GS}/guix/manual/es/html_node/
> guix.fr               mono    ${GS}/guix/manual/fr/guix.html
> guix.fr               node    ${GS}/guix/manual/fr/html_node/
> guix          mono    ${GS}/guix/manual/en/guix.html
> guix          node    ${GS}/guix/manual/en/html_node/
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
> 
> Yet, in the HTML output, references to “guix.fr” etc. are always
> replaced by the URL of the English manual (“guix”).
> 
> Is the “.LANG” extension in the manual name somehow stripped?

Hello Ludo, the extension is stripped in the _external_node_href 
function in HTML.pm.  I found this one-line change would give the 
desired output (when I added those lines to htmlxref.cnf):

diff --git a/tp/Texinfo/Convert/HTML.pm b/tp/Texinfo/Convert/HTML.pm
index 9ac4ae7..e987382 100644
--- a/tp/Texinfo/Convert/HTML.pm
+++ b/tp/Texinfo/Convert/HTML.pm
@@ -5820,7 +5820,7 @@ sub _external_node_href($$$$)
        { 'code' => 1, 
          Texinfo::Common::_convert_text_options($self)});
     my $manual_base = $manual_name;
-    $manual_base =~ s/\.[^\.]*$//;
+    $manual_base =~ s/\.info*$//;
     $manual_base =~ s/^.*\///;
     my $document_split = $self->get_conf('SPLIT');
     $document_split = 'mono' if (!$document_split);


I don't know for sure what the justification is 
for that, but I suspect it is because some Texinfo manuals in the past 
have used a file extension inside the cross-reference commands, like 
this: @xref{node,,, manual.info, Manual}.

> Is there a workaround you would recommend?

It would be more reliable to call the translated manuals guix-de, 
guix-es etc.  The full stop may be used to strip off a file extension in 
other contexts; for example, the info browser might find it hard to 
distinguish between an Info file guix.de.info and a file guix.info.  
One issue is that Info files may be compressed and installed as e.g. 
guix.info.gz, so the info browser has taken the simple approach of 
stripping off all suffixes.