Re: Texinfo 7.0 changed the name of HTML output directory

[Patrice Dumas]

On Sun, Aug 25, 2024 at 05:27:19PM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> As you discuss the various changes and improvements to this, please
> consider one additional aspect: it is quite reasonable for a project
> to have cross-references to other manuals, which are not necessarily
> of interest for the GNU Project, at least not enough to have that
> referent manual in htmlxref.cnf.

I think that, for now, we should have all the manuals in htmlxref.cnf
not only GNU manuals.  I view the htmlxref.cnf file as a way to
translate any manual identifier (the manual name right now) as a
ressource located in the World Wide Web (that can be used in a
cross-reference).  A bit like what doi.org does but restricted to the
Texinfo HTML manuals world -- for that objective I cannot see how a
distributed database could do the job.  I guess that doi.org delegates
to organizations, we should do that too, do the GNU manuals ourselves,
and have the non GNU manuals be delagated somehow, but for now, as long
as we do not have such an structure, I think that it is better if we add
all the known Texinfo HTML manuals.  We also should do that in
collaboration with other software that convert Texinfo to HTML, as they
should have the same World Wide Web manuals htmlxref.cnf we have here
and, if possible, help adding entries for manuals that are in general
converted by those softwares.  I have no idea if there exist other
softwares that convert Texinfo to HTML, actually.

> So maybe we need two such files: one maintained by Texinfo, where only
> GNU manuals are mentioned, the other local to a project, where the
> project could augment the Texinfo-maintained file with additions that
> are of interest only to that project.

We should have that, I think, even if we try to have all the manuals in
Texinfo htmlxref.cnf.

> Yes, I know that this should already be possible, but at least the
> Texinfo manual should mention this.  E.g., currently the Texinfo
> manual asks for every update to the file to be reported to the Texinfo
> developers, but that makes little sense for such "project-specific"
> external references.  Maybe this project-local file should also be
> named differently, I don't know.

It is not really possible as we discussed previously, to have a per
project htmlxref.cnf.  It is possible to get the information from
diverse directories, but none of those directories correspond to what
would be a per project directory.

I just did a commit that adds TEXINFO_LANGUAGE_DIRECTORIES, so it is now
somewhat possible to prepend a directory there, but only from an init
file, and only prepending for now.

-- 
Pat