Re: Cross-references without a web location

[Patrice Dumas]

On Sat, Sep 18, 2021 at 08:44:19PM -0700, Sarah Morgensen wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Is there a way to avoid a non-functional link in the HTML output when
> there is no htmlxref.cnf entry for an xref?

The idea behind the specification of the HTML cross references file
destinations, when there is no htmlxref.cnf, is that non split manual
are all in a directory, and split manuals are in the same directoy, each
in its subdirectory.  See the node "HTML Cross-reference Link Basics" in
the Texinfo manual for more informations on that.

For distributions, it is possible to setup an htmlxref.cnf file in
sysconfdir.  It is also possible to use EXTERNAL_DIR customization
variable for the localisation of the manuals directory (though it is
likely not to be practical).

> Working on the GNU Guix manual, I've noticed that there are several
> xrefs for which there is no entry in htmlxref.cnf (because there is no
> published web location for them).  In the HTML output, there is still a
> link, but it redirects to a nonexistent relative url.  For example, a
> reference to the manual "gpm" yields a relative link to "gpm.html",
> which of course doesn't work because we don't publish that manual.

The generated HTML manual cannot easily be changed after it has been
generated.  And the target manual could appear later -- hopefully in
the location guessed by the generated manual.  At least that's what is
assumed by the HTML cross references specification, but if there are
better ideas, we can consider them.

> It would be nice to instead print something closer to what @inforef
> would print, but with the manual title as well.

In HTML @inforef is the same as @xref, with the third argument of
@inforef used as the fourth argument of @xref.  Are you referring to
that formatting of @inforef in HTML, or to some other possibility?

Can you please tell more precisely what you would envision as
* the text of the link
* the url of the link for the href= attribute

Thanks!

-- 
Pat