Re: bad relative urls in texinfo-4.0f

[Eli Zaretskii]

On Wed, 13 Feb 2002, Per Bothner wrote:

> Anybody who has multiple nodes that map to the same file name can
> and should fix their node names.

Unfortunately, it's not always practical to request that, given how
many characters we replace with dashes.  Think about manuals that
describe C++ classes, or about manuals such as the Groff one, where
the commands are typically cryptic and use many characters that need
to be replaced with a dash.

In addition, there are case-insensitive filesystems where the problem
is even more serious.

Doing a reasonably good job in these cases, as opposed to the original
``tough; use better node names'' approach was the main motivation for
changes in version 4.0f.  Undoing that sounds like a step backwards to
me.

> And even in that case the links still point to the correct page, so
> I consider the non-ideal outout an acceptable result given poor node
> names.

Sorry, I disagree.  Putting the user on the wrong node just because we
want to avoid the #anchor thing in the URL bar seems like too much to
pay for a minor aesthetic annoyance (if it is an annoyance; I don't
see it as such).

Also, please keep in mind that node naming comes from the Texinfo
author, not from the user.  A user cannot do much when she reads a
manual with poor node names, so it's useless to punish her.