Re: In what version did implicit node pointers debut?

On Sat, Jan 17, 2026 at 12:30:38PM -0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> At 2026-01-17T19:13:35+0100, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> > On Sat, Jan 17, 2026 at 11:40:27AM -0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> > > A colleague, Alexis Hildebrandt, pointed out that it's no longer
> > > necessary in Texinfo input to maintain node pointers (arguments
> > > after the first to a @node command). [...]  I can't find a
> > > straightforward mention of it in the Texinfo NEWS file.
> > 
> > I cannot tell if it was already present in previous releases, but I
> > just had a look at the code of Texinfo 5.0 and it seems to me that the
> > nodes without any directions have directions completed.
> 
> Thanks, Patrice!  Looks like I could have put this change in for groff
> 1.23.0, which bumped our Texinfo dependency from 4.8 to 5.0.
> 
> https://cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/commit/?id=986d2a5b2d908c9d129f6d486e8839c2ec24f761

It's a lot older than Texinfo 5.0, as far as i gather.

It's present in one of the initial commits in the git history, in commit
16440098c62 (2002-08-25), in file texinfo/makeinfo/node.c:

  /* The order is: nodename, nextnode, prevnode, upnode.
     If all of the NEXT, PREV, and UP fields are empty, they are defaulted.
     You must follow a node command which has those fields defaulted
     with a sectioning command (e.g. @chapter) giving the "level" of that node.
     It is an error not to do so.
     The defaults come from the menu in this node's parent. */
  void
  cm_node ()

This comment is unchanged from Texinfo 3.1, from 1993.  (I haven't
tried building any of these old releases to check how automatic node
pointers work, though.)

I don't know if many of the releases in the Texinfo 3.* series are
still available anywhere.   On ftp.gnu.org there is only 3.0, 3.1, 3.9
and 3.12 (I remember some of those were not original tar distributions
and were sources I salvaged from other places on the Internet.)