Re: @ref without page numbers

[Gavin Smith]

On Fri, Oct 23, 2020 at 03:42:11PM +0200, Christopher Dimech wrote:
> 
> Although it is useful to have @ref followed by page numbers, page
> numbers can make the text very difficult to follow when there there
> are two or more references cluttered together, or when the same
> reference is used (particularly when this happens on the same page).
> 
> Are there ways to stop @ref from showing page numbers?
> 
> Although the most important command is @ref, the same thing applies
> to other reference commands (@xref, @pref).
> 
> Regards
> Christopher

I wrote about this in the manual recently:

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/texinfo.git/commit/?id=35f4537b19697a448d4aa36389e6f1f736905281

+@item Yes, but how do I get a plain link, with no extra markup?
+
+You can't.  Info is a plain text format that is displayed mostly as-is
+in the viewers, and without the @samp{*note} text there would be nothing
+to mark text as a link.  Additionally, in printed output there is no
+such thing as a plain link, as the page number of the target would have
+to be printed somewhere.
+
+If you really want a plain link in HTML output without affecting other
+output formats, you could create a macro with conditional definitions for
+each output format.