Re: Timetable for 3.3.12 release. Documentation issues

[R. Bernstein]

Peter Wainwright writes:
 > On Sat, 2009-01-31 at 13:55 -0500, R. Bernstein wrote:
 > > Peter Wainwright writes:
 > >  > I agree.  I should think "Everyone" has a PDF viewer (free or non-free)
 > >  > and appropriate printer drivers now, the PS version is therefore a
 > >  > legacy item.
 > >  > 
 > >  > 
 > >  > Peter
 > > 
 > > But one thing I would consider doing is updating
 > > texinfo/texinfo.texi. There have been improvements in the last decade
 > > and one of these I believe is better line number reporting on errors.
 > 
 > I tried a recent texinfo.tex (from gnulib), but it breaks.
 > 
 > address@hidden:ddd$ pdfetex ddd.texi
 > This is pdfTeXk, Version 3.141592-1.40.3 (Web2C 7.5.6)
 >  %&-line parsing enabled.
 > entering extended mode
 > (./ddd.texi (./texinfo.tex Loading texinfo [version 2007-09-03.05]: pdf,
 > fonts, page headings, tables, conditionals, indexing, sectioning, toc,
 > environments, defuns, macros, cross references, insertions,
 > (/home/prw/src/ddd/ddd-trunk/texinfo/epsf.tex) localization, formatting,
 > and turning on texinfo input format.) (./ddd.aux) (./config.texi)
 > (./macros.texi)
 > ! Missing \endcsname inserted.
 > <to be read again> 
 >                    \def 
 > \parseargusing #1#2->\def 
 >                           \argtorun {#2}\begingroup \obeylines
 > \spaceisspace...
 > 
 > \setfont ...ntprefix #2#3 scaled #4 \csname cmap#5
 >                                                   \endcsname #1
 > l.165 \title
 >              \bigtitlesf{Debugging with \value{DDD}}
 > ? x
 > No pages of output.
 > 
 > pdfTeX warning: pdfetex: dangling objects discarded, no output file
 > produced.
 > Transcript written on ddd.log.
 > 
 > I don't understand TeX and friends very well, so I haven't a clue what
 > is going on there.
 > 

I looked a little at this. Basically there's some customized title
pages that is using and assuming some low-level (old) TeXinfo macros
that have changed (probably for the better). My suggestion here is to
get rid of the custom titling and stick with the default title layout
texinfo uses.

Second, there was some weird and probably misguided macros used in the
@node commands. This is like trying to use (not encoded) unicode in
URLs so that they'll look nice in the browser message bar. There is
largely little benefit to doing this because it's for internal
linking. It doesn't have print implications (other than what was
mentioned). So again given that what's needed to reduce maintenance
headaches, I'd also recommend removing this.

Here's a patch with these two changes a that I think will run through
a current texinfo fine:

ddd-ddd.texi.patch
Description: Patch to allow current texinfo to be used.