automatic generation of @menu entries

Mike Frysinger <[email protected]> Sat, 11 Sep 2021 23:20:00 -0400

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.tex.texinfo.general
Message-ID	<YT1x4DuiAEuBb3wu@vapier>

i couldn't easily find an answer in the archives or manual, so feel free to
point me to docs or discussions that i missed.  surely this can't be a new
idea that i managed to come up with myself.  or there's a good reason that
i can't see as to why this is a bad idea.

having to manually maintain @menu entries in each @node is pretty tedious,
especially when @contents & @node are pretty well automated.  i grok that
there will probably be cases where people want to manually curate a menu,
but why can't we have an automatic default available ?

consider the example from the texinfo manual [1].
                         Top
                          |
        -------------------------------------
       |                  |                  |
    Chapter 1          Chapter 2          Chapter 3
       |                  |                  |
    --------           --------           --------
   |        |         |        |         |        |
Section  Section   Section  Section   Section  Section
  1.1      1.2       2.1      2.2       3.1      3.2

in the @top node, there will be:
@menu
* Chapter 1::  First desc.
* Chapter 2::  Second desc.
* Chapter 3::  Third desc.
@end menu

in the Chapter 1 @node, there will be:
@menu
* Sect. 1.1::    Description of this section.
* Sect. 1.2::    Description.
@end menu

and so forth for Chapter 2, etc...

what if @menu was extended (or a new @automenu command or something) such that
people only had to write @automenu and that's it ?  the description would have
to live somewhere, but wouldn't @unnumberedsec/@heading suffice ?  or create a
new command for this too like @menudesc.
-mike

[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/texinfo.html#Node-Menu-Illustration

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