[help-texinfo] Re: @heading after @node?

[Torsten Bronger]

Hallöchen!

address@hidden (Karl Berry) writes:

>     At the moment, the DTD forbids things like
>
>     @node Blah
>     @heading Blah
>
> [...]
>
> Of course in practice there is nearly always a 1:1 (and onto)
> relationship between nodes and sections.  So we might decide that
> for a document to be processable into XML, it has to follow that
> rule and be strictly hierarchical.  I'm not sure what the
> tradeoffs are.
>
> Wdyt?

I saw this problem when my texi2latex had problems to deploy labels
(which must be created at every node since it could be referenced
somewhere).  If there is no LaTeX \section, a \label doesn't know
where to refer to.  The Texinfo documentation *suggests* to use
@section etc after @node, but doesn't make it a must, and doesn't
distinguish between @section and @heading concerning this.

texinfo.tex simply omits any number and the word "Section" if you
refer to a @node not followed by a "real" structuring heading.

For texi2latex, it doesn't matter.  Texinfo allows explicitly to
refer to unnumbered sections, and already *this* must be mimicked in
LaTeX with dirty tricks.  Whether @headings are also allowed or not,
doesn't make the problem worse.

The DTD (and actually the Texinfo documentation, too) allows for
nodes consisting only of paragraphs.  So in order to be consequent,
we should allow @heading nodes, too.  Maybe we should make @heading
a %block; element.

I admit that it's sad that the DTD is so loose then; the only thing
which is really forbidden is e.g. <section> within <subsection>.
But this only reflects the looseness of the Texinfo specification
itself.

Tschö,
Torsten.

-- 
Torsten Bronger, aquisgrana, europa vetus