bug#22651: "Up (dir)" HTML link is 404

[Gavin Smith <gavinsmith0123@gmail.com>]

On 3 May 2016 at 21:54, Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Following the “Up (dir)” from:
>
>   https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/index.html#Top
>
> leads to:
>
>   https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/dir/index.html
>
> which is 404.
>
> Can htmlxref.cnf specify what the “dir” URL should be?

It could do, but am not sure if it is a good idea. For one thing, a
page with a list of manuals is not a Texinfo manual, so having an
htmlxref.cnf line for this is an exception, which is slightly
confusing and could cause problems. For example, if you refer to the
node "(dir)Top" this would tend to go to a page called "index.html",
which may not be what the page is called. A more important problem is
that a page with a list of GNU manuals on it would only be an
appropriate "Up" link for GNU manuals.

The way to deal with this broken link at the moment is to use the
TOP_NODE_UP customization variable, like

 makeinfo --html -c TOP_NODE_UP_URL=/manual/ ...

https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/First-Node.html#First-Node


>
> If so, what about hosting a “dir” somewhere on gnu.org and have the
> default htmlxref.cnf that comes with Texinfo point to that?
>
> Thanks,
> Ludo’.
>