Why does texi2html suddenly begin to lament about it when texi2pdf deals with it just fine?
The basic answer to this question is that texi2html and texi2pdf are two completely different implementations of Texinfo (one in Perl and one in TeX), and texi2pdf (i.e., texinfo.tex) does not care a whit for node relationships, while that is fundamental to texi2html (and makeinfo). Why should I use @menu here? What is it good for? Wouldn't it be kind of redundant if I added all the sections of a chapter into a menu again? You are right that it is "kind of redundant" when all you are generating is HTML. But they are still useful because they explicitly show readers (of the output) the sections under a given chapter. And menus are fundamental to Info navigation. But since it seems you and Patrice can get book.init to work satisfactorily with enough tweaks, more power to you :). Hope this helps, karl P.S. Regarding texi2html being obsolete ... well, when texinfo 5.0 hits the streets, sort of. (No ETA.) Definitely not obsolete related to makeinfo 4.13.