On Sun, Mar 02, 2025 at 10:27:39PM +0100, pertu...@free.fr wrote: > We should have a way to change the format if needed. We cannot have the > same format forever if it is not adequate.
The htmlxref.cnf format is good enough for what it does. As far as we know, we do not need to add any information about node name transliteration to the htmlxref.d files distributed with Texinfo. So it is an issue that only affects people who need to use their own htmlxref.d files. Users could put the HTML xref data for the affected manuals in a separate file - then they can easily be removed if not needed. Only those files would contain the lines like hello type translit or whatever format we devise. The only other factor I am aware of for HTML xref stability is the BASEFILENAME_LENGTH variable, which is unlikely to be used. > We should avoid changing it, > but never ever changing it again in a backward compatible way seems to > me to be too constaining. We can make it easier to transition, though. > For example: > * announce in advance the change in format > * make change only for major release > * provide scripts to convert between formats > * document in the manual the range of compatibility That's all possible in principle, but seems unwarranted in this case.
