On Sat, Feb 15, 2025 at 04:38:34PM +0000, Gavin Smith wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 15, 2025 at 01:16:13PM +0000, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> >
> > [folding answers to two e-mails into one]
> >
> > >> Because in Info a `@node` always needs a `@menu` entry, AFAIK,
> > >> which is inconsistent with the `@XXXheading` behaviour.
> > >
> > > The @node directions and @menu entries, if explicit, are, in
> > > principle, fully independent from sectioning commands such as
> > > @*section and other.
> >
> > OK.
> >
> > > So, this is not different if a @node is before an @XXXheading, it
> > > may appear in an explicit node direction and in another @node menu.
> >
> > Well, the behaviour of `@node` in a split HTML document is to start a
> > new file. However, this is exactly what I would like to avoid.
>
> Yes, as far as I can tell the primary purpose of @node is to define
> units of output. In Info output, these are Info nodes. In split HTML
> output, these are files.
This is only true if USE_NODES=1. For HTML, if USE_NODES=0, the
sectioning commands define units of output and @node are only
used ase targets of cross-references.
> So what I am thinking now is that we would allow and encourage
> multiple section or heading commands within single @node. For example,
We already allow for that and we do not discourage.
> So our example above becomes:
>
> @node One
> @chapter One
>
> @label Sec One
> @section Section One
>
> @label Sec Two
> @section Section One
>
> @node ...
>
> For TeX processing, the implementation of @label would be different from
> that of @anchor in that the entry would only be written to the auxiliary
> file when the following @section was read. This would allow recording
> the label and section name together.
>
> By default, or depending on some setting, the "xrefautomaticsectiontitle"
> behaviour would be used so that e.g. @xref{Sec One} produced
> "See Section One".
There is also the idea that the following would lead to @label
associated to @heading, and not @section, as is the case now for @node:
@label Heading 1
@heading heading one
@section a section
> This would be enough for your needs, as far as I can tell, but in case
> we also wanted "xrefauto'ed" links to arbitrary locations, not just
> headings, then we'd need to extend @anchor as discussed elsewhere in this
> discussion:
>
> @table @asis
> @item Papilon@namedanchor{Butterfly, Papilon}
> ...
> @end table
>
> (This follows Patrice's suggestion.)
>
> Then the "anchor name" would be "Butterfly"; the name for cross-references
> would be "Papilon". (I'm not sure how to refer to the name for
> cross-references as both "name" and "label" are confusing terms. The
> "refname"?)
Maybe we could wait for actual use cases before implementing this?
--
Pat
