Subject: bug#9872: closed (Re: hello project web page includes libc and autotools manuals?)

From: [email-masked] (GNU bug Tracking System)
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2024 22:56:02 +0000

Your bug report

#9872: hello project web page includes libc and autotools manuals?

which was filed against the libtool package, has been closed.

The explanation is attached below, along with your original report.
If you require more details, please reply to [email-masked].

-- 
9872: https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=9872
GNU Bug Tracking System
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Subject: Re: hello project web page includes libc and autotools manuals?
From: Karl Berry <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2024 15:55:07 -0700
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

    i don't think it costs us anything, so i'm not really worried

Agreed. Closing this bug.
But for the record will reply to your other comments.

    i guess it's a question of, have all the broken manuals been regenerated, 

I would hope so, by now, but I haven't checked.

    do we care if older local archives are broken ?

I don't :).

    what about older versions of manuals too ?
    https://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/index-full.html

Well, Automake does not have any .symlinks for other manuals, so I
assume there are plenty of broken cross-manual links, but no one has
complained. Although I don't think that means much of anything.

In general, my theory on such cross-manual references is that for
decades it was essentially random whether it worked or not ... and it
mostly didn't. Which is why Patrice and I invented the htmlxref.cnf
system in the first place. So I can't get too excited about worrying
about previous attempts. It's not like it's terribly difficult to just
visit the other manual and find the node in question.

Anyway, doing nothing sounds like a good solution to me :). --best, karl.

Subject: Re: hello project web page includes libc and autotools manuals?
From: [email-masked] (Karl Berry)
To: [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 23:16:18 GMT
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

There were several messages on several lists about the crazy url's
relating to cross references from one Texinfo manual to another, like
http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/manual/emacs/

I've explained this a number of times in a number of places, but
apparently not enough times and not the right places :).

The bad news is that there is no good way to fix this immediately.
We'll just have to keep living with these weird url's, as we have been
for many years already.

The good news is that the next release of Texinfo does fix this in the
right way, such that cross-manual references will end up going to the
real manual, as in
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/etc...

I hope that we will make the first pretest for the next Texinfo within a
few days, perhaps next week.  At that point, it should be feasible to
use it to (re)generate HTML, if nothing else.  It would also be very
helpful testing from my Texinfo-maintainer perspective :).

I've been using the development Texinfo to create the HTML for new
versions of the GNU Coding Standards and Maintainer Information (and of
the latest GNU Hello release), so at least the thing is basically
functional.

Of course, another (ugly) option is to post-process the generated HTML
to change the links.  If anyone cares, I can send the scripts I used to
do that before the new Texinfo was far enough along.

Best,
karl