Re: use directly makeinfo in texi2dvi instead of working around

[Patrice Dumas]

On Wed, Aug 24, 2022 at 05:36:09PM +0100, Gavin Smith wrote:
> 
> This code is for the --macro-expand option which may not be used that
> much although may be baked into build scripts and the like.  texinfo.tex's
> own macro expansion is nearly always good enough, as far as I'm aware.

I think that it is used, as sometime texinfo.tex macro expansion is not
ok, I remember having seen discussions on that on the Texinfo mailing
lists.

> My preference would be to leave the code as it is now, as it looks fairly
> complicatedm and it is one more thing to break when the code gets a
> wider audience after a new release, on top of other unexpected breakages,
> which we would struggle to process.  There doesn't seem to be any
> pressing need to change this code.

Ok, nothing urgent at all, it is just that I read about it in the manual

 If this option is used, no line in the source file may
 begin with the string '@c _texi2dvi' or the string '@c (_texi2dvi)'.

and I didn't understand why makeinfo wasn't used more simply.

> I'd suggest changing the code after the next release when things have
> settled down a bit.  We could add this to some TODO list.  The code
> with command_iftex is pretty horrendous and it would be good to have
> it gone.  I couldn't find out much about the history of this code.

I think that it is explained in the comment in texi2dvi:

# Unfortunately, makeinfo --iftex --no-ifinfo doesn't work well enough
# in versions before 5.0, as makeinfo can't parse the TeX commands
# inside @tex blocks, so work around with sed.

-- 
Pat