texinfo-6.8.91 pretest

[Gavin Smith]

We have uploaded the next pretest for the Texinfo 7.0 release to

https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/texinfo/texinfo-6.8.91.tar.xz

There have been many changes since the previous release (see below),
but among the most notable are the addition of LaTeX and EPUB 3 as
texi2any output formats.  This release should build easily with
glibc 2.34, and the 'info' program does not crash immediately in a
Brazilian Portuguese locale.

We make these pretest releases to encourage wider testing before a
release.

Many thanks to those who tested and reported problems for the previous
pretest, as well as to the translators at the Translation Project.

Please send any comments to <bug-texinfo@gnu.org>.

Here is list of some changes since the last pretest:

* A change has been made to the way locale settings (LC_ALL, LC_MESSAGES,
  LC_CTYPE) are set inside texi2any.  This should fix test failures on
  some systems (DragonFlyBSD 5.9, macOS 10.13).
* Avoid $< in Makefile rule, which doesn't work on NetBSD
* Gnulib update to avoid error message related to "static_assert"
  on Solaris 11.4
* Info files fixed to include correct 'dir' entries
* Check that the 'awk' program for running texindex is not archaic, as
  on Solaris 11.4
* Use \[ and \] in LaTeX output instead of $$ and $$
* info and install-info test suite changes to accommodate CR-LF line
  endings being produced on mingw-w64
* Fix EPUB 3 code that was erroneously producing backslashes as file name
  separators on MS-Windows
* On MS-Windows, skip several tests involving character encodings in
  file names
* In Perl extension (XS) modules, avoid mixing definitions of 'free'
  function.  This fixes the build on MS-Windows.
* Try to avoid some Gnulib redefinitions of Posix functions on MS-Windows
* Work-around added for non-presence of I18N::Langinfo module on MS-Windows
* Do not pass -w flag to 'prove' program in tests, as it doesn't exist for
  older versions
* Various fixes and rewordings in the documentation
* texi2any may be slightly faster
* The release size is smaller

Problems reported since the last pretest that we weren't able to fix:

* Failure of info/t/dir-file-sloppily.pl on Solaris 11 OmniOS
  and Solaris 11 OpenIndiana

Full news:

* texi2any
 . LaTeX added as an output format, selected with --latex
 . EPUB 3 added as an output format, selected with --epub3
 . reform throughout the code in general
 . thorough review of character encoding issues
 . new customization variables involved with character encoding:
     INPUT_FILE_NAME_ENCODING, OUTPUT_FILE_NAME_ENCODING,
     DOC_ENCODING_FOR_INPUT_FILE_NAME, DOC_ENCODING_FOR_OUTPUT_FILE_NAME,
     MESSAGE_ENCODING and COMMAND_LINE_ENCODING.
 . warn if full-text commands (@ref, @footnote, @anchor) appear in @w
 . new variable NO_TOP_NODE_OUTPUT
 . IGNORE_BEFORE_SETFILENAME variable removed.  former effect
   is now always on.
 . HTML output:
     . new USE_XML_SYNTAX, HTML_ROOT_ELEMENT_ATTRIBUTES and
       NO_CUSTOM_HTML_ATTRIBUTE variables added that can be used to output
       valid XHTML.
     . new variable IGNORE_REF_TO_TOP_NODE_UP
     . use manual_name_html as output directory for split HTML instead of
       manual_name or manual_name.html
     . default DOCTYPE declaration changed to plain HTML5 style rather than
       HTML4 DTD reference
     . output only the CSS rules that are needed in an output file
     . remove CSS_LINES variable and add SHOW_BUILTIN_CSS_RULES
       (custom CSS can still be output using EXTRA_HEAD)
     . use <code> tag for the output of @t and @verb instead of <tt>
     . use <abbr> for @acronym instead of <acronym>
     . percent encode URL in @url/@uref, @email, @image and external manual
       file
     . systematic addition of classes attribute in HTML elements based on the
       Texinfo @-command names.  renaming of class attributes to avoid
       confusion with @-commands formatting and describe the role in the
       document rather than the formatting style.
     . prefix classes from @example arguments with `user-'
     . COPIABLE_ANCHORS renamed to COPIABLE_LINKS
     . do not add a title by default; SHOW_TITLE has to be set
       (or NO_TOP_NODE_OUTPUT).
     . default value of USE_TITLEPAGE_FOR_TITLE is now true.
     . L2H variable removed.  replaced by HTML_MATH set to l2h.
     . rename OVERVIEW_LINK_TO_TOC to SHORT_TOC_LINK_TO_TOC, and rename
       BEFORE_OVERVIEW to BEFORE_SHORT_TOC_LINE and AFTER_OVERVIEW to
       AFTER_SHORT_TOC_LINES.
     . remove PRE_ABOUT, AFTER_ABOUT, and add PROGRAM_NAME_IN_ABOUT
     . remove KEEP_TOP_EXTERNAL_REF
     . new variable CONVERT_TO_LATEX_IN_MATH
     . add HTMLXREF_MODE and HTMLXREF_FILE
     . link to table of contents from short table of contents only if a
       table of contents is actually output
 . DocBook output:
     . do not output Top node nor text before the first @node or sectioning
       @-command.  NO_TOP_NODE_OUTPUT can be set to false to output Top node
       for now.
     . replace @definfocenlose defined @-commands by the argument as-is
       to be more consistent with printed output.
 . HTML/DocBook output:
     . meaning of USE_NUMERIC_ENTITY changed to be using numeric entities in
       priority.  former effect is now always on.
     . ENABLE_ENCODING_USE_ENTITY variable removed.  former effect is now
       always off.
 . info output
     . quote problematic node names (with :, comma...) by default
     . new customization variable ASCII_PUNCTUATION to use plain ASCII
       characters for quotation marks and a few other symbols

* texi2any, texinfo.tex
 . for @deftype* commands, use typewriter font in argument list

* texinfo.tex
  . `@microtype on' uses microtypography in formatting for pdfTeX and LuaTeX
  . do not ignore @part page immediately following Top node
  . for @deftype* commands, use typewriter font in argument list
  . do `@set txicodevaristt' to get slanted typewriter for @var in code,
    `@clear txicodevaristt' to use slanted, variable-width roman font for
    @var everywhere.  flag is @set by default, but we plan to turn this
    off in the future.
  . new file doc/texinfo-zh.tex for Texinfo documents in Chinese.
    new support file doc/txi-zh.tex for Chinese.  doc/short-sample-zh.texi is
    a sample document.

* info
  . better support for index entries containing parentheses
  . better support for getting bold text etc. when displaying manpages
  . bug fixed where the first index entry in a file could be ignored
  . M-C-f closes as well as opens footnotes window
  . do not crash if run in Brazilian Portuguese locale

* Language
  . new commands @latex, @iflatex, @ifnotlatex for new LaTeX output format
  . do `@set txidefnamenospace' to omit space after a definition name

* Other
  . build fixed for glibc 2.34