On Wed, Aug 24, 2022 at 05:36:09PM +0100, Gavin Smith wrote: > > 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.
I think that it is used, as sometime texinfo.tex macro expansion is not ok, I remember having seen discussions on that on the Texinfo mailing lists. > 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. Ok, nothing urgent at all, it is just that I read about it in the manual If this option is used, no line in the source file may begin with the string '@c _texi2dvi' or the string '@c (_texi2dvi)'. and I didn't understand why makeinfo wasn't used more simply. > 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. I think that it is explained in the comment in texi2dvi: # Unfortunately, makeinfo --iftex --no-ifinfo doesn't work well enough # in versions before 5.0, as makeinfo can't parse the TeX commands # inside @tex blocks, so work around with sed. -- Pat
