Per,
I hate to point out the obvious:
Yes, the obvious. Do you really think we haven't thought about this?
We've been working toward this for years now and have said all this many
times before on this and other mailing lists.
I realize the slowdown is significant for you and you don't need any
customization, etc. Fine. As long as makeinfo 4.13 does everything you
need, by all means, keep using it. Nothing in the new program is
intended to be backward-incompatible (aside from obscure behavior that
doesn't affect real documents). However, the C program will not be
updated or included in the distribution any more. It's just not
maintainable or enhanceable in any kind of reasonable way.
Like I said (and you ignored), we very much want to make the Perl
version comparable in speed, in the end. But it can't all be done at
once.
Patrice already answered the rest.
Sigh.
karl