Re: 5-arg xref to Top w/o 3rd arg

[Patrice Dumas]

On Mon, Jan 09, 2012 at 02:25:26PM -0800, Karl Berry wrote:
> Texinfo friends,
> 
> Thus, my idea is to say that if the first argument is Top
> (case-insensitive), the third
> argument is not present, and the fifth argument is present, as in:
>   @xref{Top,, info, GNU Info}.

I guess you meant @xref{Top,,, info, GNU Info}.

> the output in TeX is effectively:
>   See @cite{GNU Info}
> 
> Right now, the output is:
>   See Section "Top" in GNU Info.
> 
> which is certainly wrong, as the Top node never (or close enough)
> appears in the printed output.  So is there a downside?  Wdyt?

I think that it would be even more simple to accept empty first
argument, when there is a 4rth or fifth argument.  The above would then
be 
  @xref{,,, info, GNU Info}.

> The Info output isn't affected since it never uses the third (or fifth)
> arg anyway.

But other output formats may be affected, at least docbook and HTML
which nowadays are more similar with TeX output than with info.

> I'm not sure if this would affect the non-TeX formats when
> xrefautomaticsectiontitle on, but I don't imagine it's any problem to
> implement if so :).  Patrice?

xrefautomaticsectiontitle is only used if the reference is an internal
reference, that is no 4rth or fifth argument, so this is not an issue.

-- 
Pat