On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 03:41:36PM -0600, Karl Berry wrote: > I had a look at a few printed books and there seems to be typographical > precedent for not having the page number in the usual place on a chapter > page, so I am thinking that perhaps the page number should be omitted > unconditionally if a @*heading command isn't used. > > FWIW, I don't think that's a good idea for Texinfo. The reason most > books do chapter pages differently is that chapter openings are > formatted significantly different from regular text pages. So, for > example, the page number might appear centered at the bottom instead of > in the header. > > But for Texinfo, all pages are (intentionally) laid out the same > way. Texinfo is supposed to emphasize usability and simplicity over > appearance. So not having a page number on a non-blank content does not > seem right to me -- that would just make it harder for people to figure > out what page it is if they want to refer to it.
Sounds good to me. > As you know, Texinfo was never intended to support arbitrary formatting. -k I'm not opposed in principle to people customizing output but not to add special support for it, especially in TeX. (Maybe if there is ever a LaTeX back-end then the customization could be done there.) Arbritrary formatting in the Texinfo source is another issue which I agree is unnecessary (colours, underlined text, etc.).
