Re: [help-texinfo] No index in PDF manual

[Mohammad Akhlaghi]

On 3/31/19 12:05 AM, Gavin Smith wrote:> I'm not sure what the solution 
is here.  I had expected that it would be
> more likely that newer texi2dvi would be used with older texinfo.tex
> (due to the fact that texinfo.tex is not automatically installed by the
> Makefile), but it appears that older texi2dvi is likely used with newer
> texinfo.tex.
>
> If the newer version is coming from gnulib, one solution would be to ask
> the gnulib maintainers to keep an older version of texinfo.tex in
> their repository until the newer version of texi2dvi is more widespread.
> Maybe there is some way that texinfo.tex could be removed from
> build-aux, too.  (In Texinfo's own sources there is a version of
> texinfo.tex added automatically to build-aux, and this has been a source of
> confusion in the past, as the extra copy of the file is apparently
> unnecessary.)

I tried removing the `texinfo.tex' in `build-aux', but then the PDF 
wasn't built at all (complaining about not finding `texinfo.tex'). In 
Gnuastro, the `build-aux/texinfo.tex' is the only one.

Is it possible to add a check in the new `texinfo.tex' file to see if 
`texi2dvi' accepts the new escape character or not, and use the old 
character if it doesn't?

I know that this is a burden, but it would help in backwards 
compatibility, and can be fully removed in a year or two (when the next 
version is widely used).

Another solution that comes to my mind, maybe to release the next 
Texinfo soon, so we can build, install and use it.

Since many GNU programs use Gnulib, this problem might pop up more often 
soon, once their next versions are being released. It is hard to notice 
(the indices are in the end of the PDF and not immediately visible for 
someone not familiar with this problem).

Thanks a lot,
Mohammad