Re: Problem with heading appearing on new chapter page

[Gavin Smith]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 03:41:36PM -0600, Karl Berry wrote:
>     I had a look at a few printed books and there seems to be typographical 
>     precedent for not having the page number in the usual place on a chapter 
>     page, so I am thinking that perhaps the page number should be omitted 
>     unconditionally if a @*heading command isn't used.
> 
> FWIW, I don't think that's a good idea for Texinfo. The reason most
> books do chapter pages differently is that chapter openings are
> formatted significantly different from regular text pages. So, for
> example, the page number might appear centered at the bottom instead of
> in the header.
> 
> But for Texinfo, all pages are (intentionally) laid out the same
> way. Texinfo is supposed to emphasize usability and simplicity over
> appearance. So not having a page number on a non-blank content does not
> seem right to me -- that would just make it harder for people to figure
> out what page it is if they want to refer to it.

Sounds good to me.

> As you know, Texinfo was never intended to support arbitrary formatting. -k

I'm not opposed in principle to people customizing output but not to add 
special support for it, especially in TeX.  (Maybe if there is ever a 
LaTeX back-end then the customization could be done there.)  Arbritrary 
formatting in the Texinfo source is another issue which I agree is 
unnecessary (colours, underlined text, etc.).