Subject: Re: bug#24289: bug in online documentation presentation

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 17:02:45 +0300

tags 24289 + notabug
thanks

> From: Eric Weaver <[email-masked]>
> Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 18:24:42 -0400
> Cc: Eric Matthew Weaver <[email-masked]>
> 
> bug in online documentation presentation ... not the content, but the presentation... I'm reading the
> documentation page-by-page and am noticing an inconsistency with the presence (or lack) of the bottom row
> of links. For example...
> 
> page 1, "https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Introduction.html#Introduction" has the
> top & bottom rows of Next, Previous, Up, Contents, Index
> but page 1.1, "https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Caveats.html#Caveats" has only
> the top row
> page 1.2, "https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Lisp-History.html#Lisp-History" has
> both the top & bottom rows
> but page 1.3, "https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Conventions.html#Conventions"
> has only the top row
> and page 1.3.1,
> "https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Some-Terms.html#Some-Terms" has only the
> top row
> page 1.3.2, "https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/nil-and-t.html#nil-and-t" has both
> the top & bottom rows
> but page 1.3.3,
> "https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Evaluation-Notation.html#Evaluation-Notation"
> has only the top row
> 
> the pattern so far is that if the outline hierarchical address ends with an odd number, then the page does not
> get a bottom row of links.

No, the pattern is: if the node is large enough, it gets the links at
the bottom, in addition to the ones at the top.  The theory behind
this being that in a short enough node you will still see the links at
the top even when you are reading the stuff at the bottom.

In the Texinfo manual we have this piece of documentation:

  'WORDS_IN_PAGE'
       For HTML, with output split at nodes.  Specifies the approximate
       minimum page length at which a navigation panel is placed at the
       bottom of a page.  To avoid ever having the navigation buttons at
       the bottom of a page, set this to a sufficiently large number.  The
       default is 300.

If you think the default value is too large, please report this to the
Texinfo maintainers.  This project just uses Texinfo defaults while
producing the HTML docs.

> Would be great if you can fix it, but it's not the end of the world.

Personally, I don't think this is something that should be fixed,
certainly not in Emacs.

Thanks.