Couldn't the developer specify the minimum version of Texinfo which is
required in order to handle the docs?
In practice, no one has time for that. As you say, they therefore could
specify what they use (the latest, probably), and then older versions
will fail (when they shouldn't, probably). And many installers just use
what came with the distribution (usually old).
If, as in Bruce's proposal, they explicitly say "I want HTML", when
there's no HTML in the distribution, that's one thing. Making it happen
when they say "configure && make install", quite another.
And yes, I try very hard to make Texinfo backward-compatible.
