bug#14410: (was: GNU Automake 1.13.2 released)

[Stefano Lattarini]

retitle 14410  Suggested Texinfo suffixes inconsistent with suggestions of 
Texinfo manual
severity 14410 minor
tags 14410 wontfix
close 14410
stop

Reference:
<http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=14410>

> Hello Stefano.
>
Hi Antonio, sorry for the awful delay in replying.

> Thanks for the detailed announcement. One learns things reading it. :-)
>
> Stefano Lattarini wrote:
>>
>>   - Use of Texinfo input files with '.txi' or '.texinfo' extensions
>>     is discouraged, and its use will raise warnings in the 'obsolete'
>>     category.  You are advised to simply use the '.texi' extension
>>     instead.
>
> After reading this, I have noticed an inconsistency between the automake
> and texinfo manuals about what extension is preferred:
>
> [1]http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/Texinfo.html
> "Any Texinfo source file must end in the .texi, .txi, or .texinfo
> extension. We recommend .texi for new manuals."
>
> [2]http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/Minimum.html
> "By convention, the name of a Texinfo file ends with (in order of
> preference) one of the extensions .texinfo, .texi, .txi, or .tex. The
> longer extensions are preferred since they describe more clearly to a
> human reader the nature of the file. The shorter extensions are for
> operating systems that cannot handle long file names."
>
> Is there a reason to recommend a different extension that what texinfo
> itself recommends?
>
Yes, two related reasons:

  - Almost all existing GNU packages use the '.texi' extension for the
    sources of their Texinfo manuals.

  - To simplify the implementation, in Automake-NG I had decided to only
    support one suffix for Texinfo sources; since most existing
    packages use the '.texi' suffix already, that is the one I settled
    for, removing support for '.txi' and '.texinfo'.  For backward
    compatibility reasons I didn't remove support for these two suffixes
    in mainline Automake, but still, I marked them as discouraged, in
    order to make an hypothetical transition to Automake-NG easier.

Regards,
  Stefano