texinfo-6.5.91 pretest

[Gavin Smith]

A pretest release for Texinfo has been uploaded to

https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/texinfo/texinfo-6.5.91.tar.xz

The main change since the previous pretest is that the Perl extension
modules are built slightly differently in order to work on more
systems (avoiding requiring that linking with -lperl is available).
There have been fixes for compiler warnings. More portability checks
have been added. Falling back to pure Perl modules now happens for all
of the XS extension modules in case it wasn't possible to load them.

The main highlight is that errors for newer versions of Perl have been
fixed.  Additionally, the C version of the Texinfo parser is being
released for the first time. I encourage people to test it with the
`TEXINFO_XS_PARSER' environment variable set to `1', as mentioned in
the news below.

Please email any comments to address@hidden

News:

* Language:
  . New commands @&, @ampchar{}.
  . @cropmarks command removed
  . @ctrl is no longer recognised (it was a way to insert literal
    control characters in Info files, but deprecated since the
    time of Texinfo version 2)
  . \usebracesinindexestrue is no longer recommended for using braces in
    index entries, and has been a no-op for some time

* texi2any
  . extension modules fixed to work with the "thread-safe locales" of
    Perl 5.28 and newer
  . some code changed to stop warnings being given by newer versions of Perl
  . for HTML output, use `id' to define link targets instead of the `name'
    attribute on <a>
  . A native-code implementation of the Texinfo parser has been included
    on an experimental basis, which makes texi2any a lot faster.  Set the
    `TEXINFO_XS_PARSER' environment variable to 1 to use.
  . for HTML output, new customization variable `SECTION_NAME_IN_TITLE'
    to use the argument to @chapter, @section etc. as the document
    <title>
  . pass on flags set with -D to TeX.
  . the newline after an @insertcopying is not output
  . warning given for @multitable prototypes not in braces
  . @indent and @noindent are not allowed inside the arguments to
    commands where they are not meaningful
  . @quote-arg and @allow-recursion are not recognised (these two used
    to be recognised by makeinfo in macro definitions but were never
    implemented in texinfo.tex)
  . `FIX_TEXINFO' removed as a customization variable
  . do not recognise or warn about obsolete customization variables

* Development:
  . switch from Subversion to git
     - https://savannah.gnu.org/git/?group=texinfo
  . automake 1.16