Re: master e54b94c28cd: Use @xref more consistently; "See @ref" -> "@xref"

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2025 10:25:39 -0800
> Cc: luangruo@yahoo.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> >> Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2025 12:28:32 +0000
> >> From: Pip Cet <pipcet@protonmail.com>
> >> Cc: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com>, luangruo@yahoo.com, 
> >> emacs-devel@gnu.org
> >>
> >> So we need to check that @xref and @ref, except in comment lines, are
> >> followed by optional whitespace, a balanced sexp, optional whitespace,
> >> and a punctuation character? If texinfo really cannot do this, can this?
> >
> > Maybe it can, but why bother?  I've seen many times that people don't
> > even run "make" after they install documentation changes, or don't
> > look at messages when they do (because when I run it, I see warning
> > and error messages), so why should we assume someone will run some
> > Lisp in addition to that?
> 
> FWIW, I think it would be useful to have a linter for texinfo that over
> time could be expanded to catch various errors.  I'm not sure that such
> a linter should be maintained by us, however, since it's probably more
> generally useful.  It might be better to ship it with texi2any.  But at
> that point: why not make texi2any itself warn?
> 
> So while I applaud the effort of Pip Cet to automate away boring minutia
> such as this one, perhaps we should bring these ideas to the texinfo
> developers?

Feel free, I don't mind.  I just think we have much more important
stuff on our hands and very little resources.

> BTW, there was a claim that the missed comma with @xref was "build
> breaking".  Was that claim not correct?

AFAIK, lack of punctuation after cross-references is not an error in
makeinfo 4.12, but I cannot be sure.