Re: Makeinfo --html produces broken external refs

[Patrice Dumas]

On Thu, Jul 05, 2007 at 07:34:21PM +0300, Sergey Poznyakoff wrote:
> 
> 
> > ``usual locations'' is not what makeinfo's code has in mind.  Makeinfo
> > produces HTML files assuming that there is a single directory where
> > all the manuals live.
> 
> This may have been the case in the early days of GNU, but it is not now.

Unless I am wrong it is in fact the reverse. First there was the GNU
layout and afterwards we discussed the cross manual references in HTML.
We came to the flat solution because it is the simpler default one could
think about without assuming a specific layout. On my request, we also
wanted to have a cross manual references scheme implementation independent
such that manuals generated by makeinfo and by texi2html have cross
references right.

> I'd rather call this `evolution'. The simple, `flat' layout you described
> was OK when there were 10-20 components in GNU. It is hardly usable for
> 170+ projects that it has now.

Why not?

> Such a feature might be useful. Nevertheless, I believe that the
> documentation system should provide a mechanism for specifying base URLs
> in the document. For example, if any piece of documentation refers, say,
> to GNU tar, it is quite natural to point to the tar's documentation on
> www.gnu.org and not elsewhere. Besides, the same document can refer to

Something is already planned for that, using a configuration file,
called 'htmlxref.cnf'. Then in that file you can add entries like

tar mono www.gnu.org/somewhere/
tar split www.gnu.org/somewhere/nodes

> documentation for two projects hosted on different sites. In that case a
> command line option would hardly help, because it would supply only one
> URL. With the @setxrefurl commands, the base url for any following @xref
> can be reset any place in the document.

@setxrefurl could also be used similarly with htmlxref.cnf and provide 
the same information. As far as I know, currently htmlxref.cnf 
support isn't implemented in makeinfo.


In any case I agree that the discrepancy between the GNU manuals
directory layout as setup by gendoc.sh and the ref to external html
manuals is a bit problematic.

--
Pat