html dir links, table summary

[Karl Berry]

Hi Kurt - I'm cc-ing my colleagues at texinfo-devel, so will include
your original msg and intersperse my replies.

    Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 11:14:19 +0100
    From: Kurt Hornik <address@hidden>
    To: address@hidden (Karl Berry)
    Subject: Texinfo to HTML conversion problems

    [...]
    I recently tried the effect of running linkchecker on our R-project and
    CRAN web pages, which as you know contain HTML versions of the R manuals
    obtained from their texinfo sources.

    This complains about invalid dir.html links in the top menus, which by
    default contain something like

    <div class="header">
    <p>
    Next: <a href="#Preamble" accesskey="n" rel="next">Preamble</a>, Previous: 
<a href="dir.html#Top" accesskey="p" rel="prev">(dir)</a>, Up: <a 
href="dir.html#Top" accesskey="u" rel="up">(dir)</a> &nbsp; </p>
    </div>

    Now in Texinfo 5.2 I can set the configuration variable TOP_NODE_UP_URL
    to empty to get rid of the "Up" hyperlink: but this still leaves the
    "Previous" hyperlink in, and I found no way to programmatically get rid
    of this one.  Is there a way?

Not that I know of.  I think it would be best if the TOP_NODE_UP_URL
value (or some new configuration variable) replaced all occurrences of
(dir).  It doesn't make sense to me otherwise.  I also think I may be
forgetting the exact circumstances of my asking Patrice to create
TOP_NODE_UP ...

    Also, is there a way to programmatically generate dir.html?  

Not that I know of.  It seems a fruitless effort since everyone's site
is different.

    (E.g., using install-info?)

Definitely not with that, or any Texinfo tool.

    In our case, it would be "best" to simply have the top node menu not
    have any hyperlinks to dir, so I'll look into a way to post-process the
    generated HTML accordingly.

You could replace the (dir) links with your top-level doc url.
That's more or less what I always had in mind.

We could also have some value of TOP_NODE_UP (or whatever), like "null",
mean to omit the references, if you think that is needed.
    
    By the way, HTML validators give 
      Warning: <table> lacks "summary" attribute

I think those validators are in error.  Suddenly warning about something
that has never been (and still isn't) required?  I gather the US
government has started recommending it in section 508.  Fine, but the
rest of the world cannot change on a dime.

    because the menu tables have no summary attribute: perhaps in 
    ./Texinfo/Convert/HTML.pm: 
       $result .= '<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
    you could add something like summary="Menu" (perhaps with the name of
    the node the menu is for)?

Thanks for the finding the reference.  A static summary="Menu" doesn't
seem useful to me, but with the name of the node, I suppose it is better
to do it than not.

Patrice, Gavin, wdyt?

Thanks,
Karl