Bug reports for texinfo (and 2 wishes)

[Norbert Preining]

Hi Karl!

I have collected some bug reports I got for texinfo in Debian, and which
I want to bring to your attention. I always give bug numbers, you can look
up the discussion on the bug under
        http://bugs.debian.org/NUMBER
I will try to give a short summary what the bug is about that should
help you in understanding what is meant. If you want to see more
information, please go to the above web page for each bug.
Or of course ask me.


37515   bookmarks of pdf files in appendix are wrong
----------------------------------------------------
This bug report first only was about pdf bookmarks jumping to a wrong place.
You did inplement this later on, and it is working everywhere *BUT* in
the appendix! There clicking on the bookmark in xpdf/acroread goes to
the bottom of the page, or even the wrong page.
(Example exist, if you want I send it to you)

146133 and 151850       Matching vs. Searching
----------------------------------------------
If you take a info file which is split into different files, and there
is a node containing a `.', jumping to this node does not work.
I checked this with 4.8 and it is still present there.
(I have a rather long example here, if you want I send it to you)

214729  makeinfo --html should generate valid HTML
--------------------------------------------------
makeinfo --html currently generates HTML without a DOCTYPE line.
It should generate valid HTML.


218557  dies with "Cannot find node `Top'"
------------------------------------------
THere are wo things involved here. One is that install-info (THE DEBIAN
variant, which is different to the one in texinfo!) does something strange.
Anyway. BUT: It seems that the info reader does not do do some error checking
if the dir file is severely damaged: Here is an analysis (you also find in
the bug report) (shortened):
        [1] I think this could be in build_tags_and_nodes(), in info/nodes.c,
        where the file is already in memory and is parsed for expected
        structures.  There we could stuff some error returning code, the
        function simply doesn't update any error flag.
        I have gdbed a run through the function, and while parsing
        /usr/share/info/dir, it simply did not find the end of the TAGS_TABLE
        (at line 402), and called get_nodes_of_info_file().
          This get_nodes_of_info_file() function has the same problem, it
        doesn't return an useful error but aborts at the first while loop since
        find_node_separator() fails (scans the whole file to find a "node
        start").
          End result: build_tags_and_nodes parses for tags, but does not report
        problems, and build_tags_and_nodes parses for nodes (by calling a
        helper), but doesn't report problems encountered there neither.


234848  info ./jdfsdofs starts with man page of top, instead of the Top node
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you supply a filename on the cmdline which does not exists, then the
man page of top is shown, instead of showing the Top node in dir.

Maybe this can be handled also via error handling in the spirit of the 
stuff said in the previous bug report!


269413  [INTL:da] Updated program translation
---------------------------------------------
The submitter is the author of the da translation in 4.8, too, and he has
sent in a new translation. But this one is not in cvs. I know that the
translations have to come in from the translation project, but this 
fixed translation is from 2004-09-01!


276000  Wrong page number in table of contents
----------------------------------------------
In the bug report there is a simple file which produces wrong page numberings,
the entry is one page off.


276006  bogus error message when $TEXINPUTS contains nonexistent directory
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
title says all. Fix is attached to the patch:
--- /home/frank/src/packages_for_mydebwork/texinfo-4.7/util/texi2dvi    Mon Oct 
11 14:41:33 2004
+++ /usr/local/bin/texi2dvi     Mon Oct 11 14:51:46 2004
@@ -460,7 +460,7 @@
         TEXINPUTS=$TEXINPUTS$path_sep$dir
         ;;
       *)
-        abs=`cd "$dir" && pwd` && TEXINPUTS=$TEXINPUTS$path_sep$abs
+        abs=`cd "$dir" 2>/dev/null && pwd` && TEXINPUTS=$TEXINPUTS$path_sep$abs
         ;;
     esac
   done


335016  makeinfo --xml generates a document with an invalid DTD
---------------------------------------------------------------
I generated an XML document with "makeinfo --xml". It contains:

<!DOCTYPE texinfo PUBLIC "-//GNU//DTD TexinfoML V4.8//EN" 
"http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/dtd/4.8/texinfo.dtd";>

But this DTD is not valid:

$ xmllint --noout --loaddtd --valid mpfr.xml
http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/dtd/4.8/texinfo.dtd:128: validity error : 
Definition of settitle has duplicate references of footnote
<!ELEMENT settitle    (#PCDATA | %Inline.phrase; | footnote)*>
                                                              ^
[...]


Wishlists
---------

31464   info: regex searching
-----------------------------
regexp searches
smart case handling: if input is all lower case -> insensitive
        if contains upper case -> sensitive


228606  makeinfo --html: split by chapter
-----------------------------------------
Split in more reasonable chunks, say one chapter per file, not one node per
file.



Herzliche Grüße

Norbert

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Norbert Preining <preining AT logic DOT at>             Università di Siena
gpg DSA: 0x09C5B094      fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76  A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KELLING (participial vb.)
A person searching for something, who has reached the futile stage of
re-looking in all the places they have looked once already, is said to
be kelling.
                        --- Douglas Adams, The Meaning of Liff