On Sun, Nov 01, 2020 at 01:37:04AM +0100, Patrice Dumas wrote: > Hello, > > Why is there no sectiontoc for the @top?
Because the index.html file usually has @contents or @shortcontents as well as the Top node. At https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/index.html there are actually three tables of contents: @shortcontents, @contents, and the menu. This is unnecessary. > Wouldn'it be better to simply output the section toc of the section, and > not the 'current_node' associated section section toc? For some manuals > it would make a difference and, in my opinion, an incorrect output, for > example when there is a construct like > > @node mynode > @section sec1 > > @section sec2 You are probably right. > It also seems to me that FORMAT_MENU set to sectiontoc for HTML would be > more consistent with USE_NODES set to 0. Otherwise nodes without > section would each be in their files, but not appear on section tocs, > and their subnodes would be completly unreachable. I'm not sure how sensible it is to use @section without a @node or vice versa. A @node without a section wouldn't be in the section toc anyway, if I understand correctly. I don't have a strong opinion about it, but I feel that the primary meaning of @node is to define a named unit of the manual, rather than define a cross-reference target. This would mean that each node would be in a separate HTML file when output is split, which means that USE_NODES should be on. A node without a section could be part of a manual with an irregular structure and it might be reachable by other means. In that case, > _default_node_direction() should probably be changed, to give something > reasonable when there is no node associated with the section. Actually, > it would probably make more sense to use sections for directions if > USE_NODES is set to 0. I haven't investigated what happens currently but this might make sense so that the section has "Next" and "Prev" links.
