Re: --pdf -E line.mac not created?

[Patrice Dumas]

On Sun, Jan 08, 2012 at 04:32:53PM -0800, Karl Berry wrote:
> Patrice,
> 
> Running
>   makeinfo --pdf -E line.mac line.tex
> does not create line.mac.  (With --html, etc., it is created.)

In fact, when texi2dvi is called, there is no processing of any file at all,
only command line options translation.  And, as you say below texi2dvi 
will call makeinfo with its own command line options as it has -E given
too.  It wouldn't be hard to process the first file on the command line
and output the resulting Texinfo in line.mac, yet I am not sure that we
want to do that.

> I guess I could document that the filename arg to makeinfo -E is ignored
> in the case of dvi|pdf, and we could see if anyone comes up with a
> reason to implement it.
> 
> Wdyt?

Ok with that.  Implementing an expansion in line.mac isn't very costly
either, so I can do it if you want to.

I am quite dissatisfied with all that, however, as it is very confusing, and
the confusion does not really stem from the expansion or not in line.mac
but from the different semantics of -E for texi2dvi and makeinfo.  Maybe it
would be better not to pass -E to texi2dvi when the -E option was given to 
makeinfo?  It would sill be possible to pass -E with --Xopt.  An additional
possibility, which maybe would be the clearest one would be to add a distinct
command line option for makeinfo that does the same as texi2dvi -E.  Let's
call this command line option --expand-for-tex.  If this option is given
to makeinfo together with --pdf/--dvi/--ps, first makeinfo would expand
the texinfo with conditionals selected as if --no-ifinfo and --iftex had
been given on the command line, to a temporary texinfo file.  And then would
call texi2dvi on that temporary texinfo file, and remove the temporary file
after texi2dvi returns.

Then 

  makeinfo -E f.mac --pdf f.texi

would lead to expansion of the texinfo in f.mac (maybe with --no-ifinfo 
and --iftex set), but texi2dvi would be called on f.texi.

  makeinfo --pdf f.texi --Xopt -E

would lead to a call of 

  texi2dvi --pdf f.texi -E

and 

  makeinfo --expand-for-tex --pdf f.texi

would mimic texi2dvi -E, that is, expand to a temporary file and call texi2dvi
on that temporary file (may also be in a temporary directory, I don't
know exactly what would be better, I could mimic what texi2dvi does).

What's you opinion on that?

-- 
Pat