Re: \pdfstartlink goto

Hi Max and all - back on your mail from April 19, 2025:

    https://tug.org/pipermail/pdftex/2025-April/009444.html
    "\pdfstartlink goto" doesn't work with "named". I added the "| named
    <general text>", so I suspect that this is just a documentation bug
    that I introduced (sorry), 

No problem, I should have checked more carefully.

    but maybe you actually intended to support "named" here?

Searching for "named" (including the quotes) in pdftex.web shows that it
is only recognized by scan_image, which implements \pdfximage. I changed
the syntax and description accordingly (I hope). See current pdftex (not
tl) svn please, r973. (Or I can send you the pdf.)

Later I'll try to ensure that the duplicated bnf in the main manual and
the appendix are identical. I wrote a script for it, but ... time ...

    Also, I find \S4.11.2 (the entire section, but especially the "goto"
    paragraph) essentially impossible to understand. 

I too find it less than wonderfully clear. Maybe we can work through it
together. For the present, in an attempt to make it a little more
readable, I made subsubsections for the different main arguments to
\pdfstartlink (p.49) (and \pdfximage, p.42) and changed some wording,
although we can only go so far. There's an irreducible amount of
complication to be documented.

I also combined the two <newwindow spec> cases in the syntax since they
are really the same thing: all the previous cases followed by
newwindow|nonewindow ... except the <file spec> is required for
<newwindow spec>, instead of being optional.

Aside: what confuses me (unrelated to "named") is the offhand remark:

  A \Something{file spec} can be either a
  \type{(}\Something{string}\type{)}
  or a \type{<<}\Something{dictionary}\type{>>}.

I'm missing the code in pdftex.web that allows a dictionary to be a
file, but I confess I didn't actually try it or peruse the PDF reference
manual to look into it. If it's supported (which I imagine it is),
something needs to be explained further.

    I'd offer to help rewrite it

Maybe (over time) you could construct minimal examples for each of the
main cases according to the syntax? Then we could add those to the
different items, which I think would help more than anything. I won't be
surprised if there are errors in the BNF.

    (Via this TeX.SX question: https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/741113)

I'm leaving a note there. --thanks, karl.