Re: automatic generation of @menu entries

On Sun, Sep 12, 2021 at 03:09:30PM -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> based on the manual description, it sounds like the tree structure is
> accessible already since that's how the @contents are generated, and
> it's able to output that just fine.  so i (naively) assume that adding
> an automatic menu would be comparable.

As Patrice said automatic menus are already possible and happen by
default.

> > It would also mean the produced menu items will lack the short
> > descriptions, which are produced by a human typing them in Texinfo.
> 
> right, that's why i suggested a new @menudesc to retain that part (if
> the existing @unnumberedsec and such are insufficient).
> -mike

If you want to have a menu description then the only option at the moment
is to have a @menu.  I don't see much benefit in adding a new command for
this only for the benefit of Info output.  We should avoid adding new
format-specific commands.  If we were redesigning Texinfo
from scratch maybe we could do without @menu and only have
@menudescription or something similar, but @menu is what we have and
seems good enough.

Using the section name as a description would often not
be appropriate (e.g. it may be very similar to the node name).