avoiding differences between TeX and other formats at beginning

[Patrice Dumas]

Hello,

I am rereading the manual, at the 'Beginning a Texinfo File', and I am
rather annoyed by the awkwardness of the text that is only output
when not processed through TeX, which is, more or less a substitute
titlepage:

@ifnottex
@node Top
@top title

@insertcopying
@end ifnottex


This is odd for many reasons, but the most important, in my view is that 
the 
  @node Top
  @top title
matters for the manual structure and therefore should be the same in all
the formats.

Thus, I see two things that are wrong

* the conditional for manual structuring commands
* format specific code (in @ifnottex) for formats without @titlepage

Overall this is very awkward and very un-Texinfo like in my opinion.
In my view this is a work-around around translator differences that
should not be required for normal documents (users may still do that but
it should not be part the default case).  I think that we should better 
come with a clean code that is focused on the content, not the formatting.

I think that the issue arises from the lack of something similar with a
@titlepage for formats other than TeX (and is permitted by the fact
that TeX do not really interprets Texinfo as correctly as makeinfo/texi2any
do).

I see two possible ways out.  One is to consider that the @titlepage
should be used in every output format, the other to propose a new
environment for the @titlepage replacement for formats without a
@titlepage.


First possibility, use a titlepage in every format.  For that, the best
I see would be to add a command @inserttitle that would replace the @top
command when there is a titlepage.  The file beginning would become along
(in case there is a title page for the document):

@c ===========================================================
@copying
This manual is for program, version version.
Copyright @copyright{} years copyright-owner.
@quotation
Permission is granted to ...
@end quotation
@end copying

@titlepage
@title name-of-manual
@subtitle subtitle-if-any
@subtitle second-subtitle
@author author

@c The following two commands
@c start the copyright page.
@page
@vskip 0pt plus 1filll

@insertcopying
@end titlepage


@node Top
@insertitlepage

@contents

@menu
* First Chapter::    Getting started ...
* Second Chapter::          ...
 ...
* Copying::          Your rights and freedoms.
@end menu

@node First Chapter
@chapter First Chapter

@cindex first chapter
@cindex chapter, first
@c ===========================================================

If there is no full title page, one could instead use @shorttitlepage,
or @top if one really do not want a title page.  something like


  @node Top
  @shorttitlepage Manual title page

  @contents

  @menu
  * First Chapter::    Getting started ...
  @end menu


or

  @node Top
  @top Manual title page

  @contents

  @menu
  * First Chapter::    Getting started ...
  @end menu


That's the approach I would favor.  Users may still do fancy formatting
of the titlepage for TeX, but then they would need to use @tex of @iftex
within @titlepage.  Also @settitle would still play a role in headings
or in html <title> and could also be in the Info headers.


In the second approach, there would be an block command
@notitlepage
@end notitlepage
for formats without titlepage.  This would lead to something like:

@c ===========================================================
@copying
This manual is for program, version version.
Copyright @copyright{} years copyright-owner.
@quotation
Permission is granted to ...
@end quotation
@end copying

@node Top

@titlepage
@title name-of-manual-with-titlepage
@subtitle subtitle-if-any
@subtitle second-subtitle
@author author

@c The following two commands
@c start the copyright page.
@page
@vskip 0pt plus 1filll

@end titlepage

@notitlepage
@top Replace the titlepage
@end notitlepage

@insertcopying

@contents

@menu
* First Chapter::    Getting started ...
* Second Chapter::          ...
 ...
* Copying::          Your rights and freedoms.
@end menu

@node First Chapter
@chapter First Chapter

@cindex first chapter
@cindex chapter, first
@c ===========================================================



Of course there is no reason to hurry for such a change.  However I also
think that it should be seriously considered, because it is an issue
that is likely to impact conversion to other output formats.  For
instance, if this can be fixed before the converter to LaTeX is really
done, I think that it would be a good thing, otherwise I predict
that the conversion to LaTeX will stumble on that issue too.

-- 
Pat