Re: mistake or bug?

[Karl Berry]

         @tex

@tex and @end tex have to be at the beginning of the line in the source.
(This is true for all the Texinfo environment commands.)

    and you will notice that there is no opening apostrophe in the file. 

That's quoting the expected string, i.e., it's trying to say:
  TeXtest.texinfo:56: Expected address@hidden tex'.
I'll check on why it's inserting the newline there.

    /usr/share/emacs/21.2/lisp/textmodes/makeinfo.elc
    but this one is only 51 lines long so I don't expect my problem is in 
there. 

That's an Emacs interface to running the standalone makeinfo program, so
you're right that it won't help with your real goal.

    I also foresee problems with the math conversion into HTML, 

Yes, I'm afraid you may not be happy with Texinfo's math support in
HTML, since all I do is copy the source (\chi^2 ...) to the output as text.

    I don't like TeX printing -> scanning -> cutting -> insert a REF to .jpg.

In the end, having an image of the math is the only thing at present
that will produce reasonable looking output, I think.  That doesn't mean
you have to produce the images by hand.

    Is there a reliable [La]TeX2HTML converter? 

There are many, each with its own pros and cons.  I have used:
  latex2html - http://www.latex2html.org/
  tex4ht - http://tug.org/applications/tex4ht/
Another program I've read about but haven't tried:
  tex2page - http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/dorai/tex2page/tex2page-doc.html

There are still others listed (rather haphazardly, I'm afraid) at
http://tug.org/interest.html#web.

Also, you can easily produce PDF, if that interests you, simply by
running pdftex or pdflatex.  Of course that will have the nicest online
output at all.

To get ASCII output from a plain TeX or LaTeX source, I think the best
approach is a DVI -> text translator.  There are several of those out
there, but I haven't used any of them in many years.  I'd be interested
in any experiences, if you go that route.

Hope this helps,
karl