How to scroll GNU info pages without unexpectedly jumping to the next node?

Posting as an answer, as requested.

Just don't use info to browse info pages. There is a standalone info browser named pinfo, and Emacs has, of course, its own Info Mode.

If you're using Vim you can also install the ref and ref-info plugins. ref is essentially a generic hypertext browser. It comes with plugins for a number of sources, such as man pages, perldoc, pydoc, etc., but not for info. ref-info is a plugin for ref that adds capability to browse info pages.

The combination ref+ref-info makes a decent info browser, with the only drawback that it can only search through the page it currently displays. A partial workaround for this problem is to tell the info backend to produce larger chunks before feeding them to ref-info, by adding this line to your vimrc:

let g:ref_info_cmd = 'info --subnodes -o -'

You'd then browse info pages like this:

:Ref info <page>

Of course, you can also use ref with the other sources (:Ref man <page> etc.). Read the manual for more information.

You can use Control-V to scroll-forward-page-only, and the reverse Meta-V or Escape-V for scroll-backward-page-only. These are listed in the h help page, but they are hard to spot.