Re: automatic generation of @menu entries

On Sat, Sep 11, 2021 at 11:20:00PM -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> 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 ?

It is already the case, in the sense that @menu are not needed anymore.
In Info output, menus are automatically generated if they do not exist.
In HTML the new default does not require menus.  In addition, there is a
"tree transformation" that can be used to add menus,
'complete_tree_nodes_menus' (and also one to add a master menu
'regenerate_master_menu').  I think that they do what the emacs commands
do, on the tree used internally in texi2any.  Tree transformations are
set by setting the TREE_TRANSFORMATIONS customization option, so
something like:

 -c 'TREE_TRANSFORMATIONS=complete_tree_nodes_menus,regenerate_master_menu'

-- 
Pat