Re: @menu puts too many restrictions to produce the .info file

[Gavin Smith]

(switching to bug-texinfo mailing list)

On Tue, Oct 20, 2020 at 10:46:06PM +0200, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 20, 2020 at 04:53:11PM +0100, Gavin Smith wrote:
> > 
> > Possibly, @novalidate was supposed to do this, as well as checking
> > cross-references:
> > 
> > https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/Pointer-Validation.html
> > 
> > > Instead, makeinfo checks that the tree constructed from the
> > > document’s menus matches the tree constructed from the sectioning
> > > commands. For example, if a chapter-level menu mentions nodes n1 and
> > > n2, in that order, nodes n1 and n2 must be associated with @section
> > > commands in the chapter.
> > 
> > However, it doesn't appear to work fully.  All the warnings/errors
> > are still present with @novalidate or --no-validate.  @novalidate
> > may also do something slightly different with texinfo.tex (stops
> > auxiliary files from being opened).  It might be worth checking what
> > @novalidate did with older versions of makeinfo to see if there
> > is a regression.
> 
> I do not think that we should do that.  I think implementing what is in
> the documentation is more important than being in line with what was
> before.  And even more important is to specify correctly in the
> documentation what it should do.

The other variable that affects whether warnings are given is SHOW_MENU,
but this is not documented.  I wonder if menu-related errors should
always be given regardless of SHOW_MENU.

At present @novalidate only turns off errors about wrong links (in
cross-references or menus), but doesn't affect errors about the
document structure.  I think it would be simpler to keep it this
way.  (If I understand correctly, the structuring errors only
came in with Texinfo 5.)

> > @novalidate seems to have been intended as an ad hoc, temporary
> > insertion in a file while it was being worked on, rather than to
> > be a permanent part of the file.
> 
> I am not so sure about that.  If it is so, it should be documented.

With TeX output it doesn't even output the page numbers for
cross-references, so it couldn't be a permanent part of the file,
at least when processing with TeX.