Re: @ref without page numbers

[Christopher Dimech]

I could not follow it very well.

My problem occurs in pdf output.  How is the page number important, is there 
notion
of page number in other formats, not just only on pdf?  How are links and page 
numbers
related?  Can one do anything for the pdf case only?


> Sent: Friday, October 23, 2020 at 8:42 PM
> From: "Gavin Smith" <gavinsmith0123@gmail.com>
> To: "Christopher Dimech" <dimech@gmx.com>
> Cc: "help-texinfo gnu" <help-texinfo@gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: @ref without page numbers
>
> On Fri, Oct 23, 2020 at 03:42:11PM +0200, Christopher Dimech wrote:
> >
> > Although it is useful to have @ref followed by page numbers, page
> > numbers can make the text very difficult to follow when there there
> > are two or more references cluttered together, or when the same
> > reference is used (particularly when this happens on the same page).
> >
> > Are there ways to stop @ref from showing page numbers?
> >
> > Although the most important command is @ref, the same thing applies
> > to other reference commands (@xref, @pref).
> >
> > Regards
> > Christopher
>
> I wrote about this in the manual recently:
>
> https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/texinfo.git/commit/?id=35f4537b19697a448d4aa36389e6f1f736905281
>
> +@item Yes, but how do I get a plain link, with no extra markup?
> +
> +You can't.  Info is a plain text format that is displayed mostly as-is
> +in the viewers, and without the @samp{*note} text there would be nothing
> +to mark text as a link.  Additionally, in printed output there is no
> +such thing as a plain link, as the page number of the target would have
> +to be printed somewhere.
> +
> +If you really want a plain link in HTML output without affecting other
> +output formats, you could create a macro with conditional definitions for
> +each output format.
>