Re: makeinfo 5.2 (or 5) breaks current texi documents

[Patrice Dumas]

On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 11:14:32AM +0900, Norbert Preining wrote:
> 
> Hi Karl, hi all,
> 
> The errors are:
> vera.texi:191: warning: unreferenced node `0'
> vera.texi:109: node `Top' lacks menu item for `0' despite being its Up target
> (many similar ones)
> 
> The vera.texi contains lines like:
> ...
> @node Top, 0, (dir), (dir)
> ...
> @node B, C, A, Top
> ...
> 
> Is this intended behaviour? The original bug report on Debian states:
> > The requirement to add menu entries when there is already references is
> > completly spurious: adding the required menu entries make the info file 
> > uglier,
> > when the references are nicer and faster to navigate.
> > And of course is break backard compatibility.
> 
> Could you please let us know what you think?

This manual is very special, as references are used instead of menus
for a part of the manual, namely the lists of accronyms.  This indeed
is not in line with the manual formats considered ok.  It is possible to
ignore completly menus, with --set SHOW_MENU=0.  (In that case the error
is still present, but I think this is a bug, I will correct it.)  But it
is not a solution for that manual as it uses menus at some places.  It
could be possible to turn that error to a warning.  Allowing @ref
instead of @menu entry to fulfill the need for menu entries seems
incorrect to me in the general case, it is too specific of this
manual.  I don't have any other idea on what to do for that manual.

As a side note, this manual is not really ready for HTML.  Maybe
replacing @ifinfo by @ifnottex would be enough, though.  It is strange
because it is explained that this manual is meant to be displayed online.

-- 
Pat