On Wed, Aug 24, 2022 at 05:38:08PM +0200, Patrice Dumas wrote: > Hello, > > The sed use in texi2dvi, with comment_iftex could be replaced > by a direct use of makeinfo, starting with 5.0, released in 16 February > 2013 (as stated in the comment). > > The following call would be the best, to avoid having a processing as > Info done: > makeinfo -c TEXINFO_OUTPUT_FORMAT=plaintexinfo --iftex --no-ifinfo > > Can it be done now or does it need to wait some years? My feeling is > that we do not need to wait, as normally users get texi2dvi together > with makeinfo/texi2any, such that 10 years is more than enough.
This code is for the --macro-expand option which may not be used that much although may be baked into build scripts and the like. texinfo.tex's own macro expansion is nearly always good enough, as far as I'm aware. My preference would be to leave the code as it is now, as it looks fairly complicatedm and it is one more thing to break when the code gets a wider audience after a new release, on top of other unexpected breakages, which we would struggle to process. There doesn't seem to be any pressing need to change this code. I'd suggest changing the code after the next release when things have settled down a bit. We could add this to some TODO list. The code with command_iftex is pretty horrendous and it would be good to have it gone. I couldn't find out much about the history of this code. Please feel free to remove it sooner if you feel you have to, e.g. if understanding it is getting in the way of other fixes you want to make.
