Re: Bug#130653: gnus: info is not accessible from menu
reassign 130653 emacsen-common
thanks
Hi,
>>"era" == era eriksson <era@iki.fi> writes:
era> The Info menu in emacs20 looks like this after I installed Gnus:
era> (...)
era> * Emacs: (emacs-e20). The extensible self-documenting text editor.
era> * Emacs-mime: (emacs-mime). Libraries for handling MIME.
era> * Emacs/W3: (w3). Emacs/W3 World Wide Web browser.
era> * Emacs/W3 FAQ: (w3-faq). FAQ for Emacs/W3 World Wide Web browser.
era> * Forms: (forms-e20). Emacs package for editing data bases by filling in
era> forms.
era> * Gnus: (gnus-e20). The newsreader Gnus.
era> * Gnus: (gnus). The news reader Gnus.
era> * Info: (info-e20). Documentation browsing system.
era> * Message: (message-e20). Mail and news composition mode that goes with Gnus.
era> * Message: (message). The Message sending thingamabob.
era> * MH-E: (mh-e-e20). Emacs interface to the MH mail system.
era> (...)
era> You'll notice that there are duplicate entries for Gnus and for
era> Message, one of which comes from the stock Emacs installation
era> (whatever-e20) and one of which was installed by Gnus.
era> Unfortunately, it would appear that the precedence of Info is such
era> that the first entry out of two duplicates will always be selected if
era> you use the M command to name a menu item.
era> Since the intention is clearly that the add-on Gnus and Message
era> packages should override the built-in ones, it would be beneficial if
era> the Info documentation was also installed so that the add-on
era> documentation will be selected in preference to the "built-in"
era> versions.
Unfortunately, install-info presents no options to allow one
to solve this. Depending on which order your gnus or emacsen were
installed in determines the order of the entries.
Suppose the following scenario exists:
There is a Package A, which installs in and ever rides emacsen
flavour X's native implementation of A, but does not install in
emacsen flavour Y and should not over ride the documentation there.
It would appear we need separate dir files for the info trees
in each of the emacsen flavours (stand alone info views perhaps being
considered an emacsen flavour in this context).
I was talking to Adam heath about this, and we considered a
info.d directory schema where packages should install a file, and
provide symbolic links into flavour specific (emacs21-info.d)
directories. (Perhaps this step can be done by install info, if
called with a list of the flavours to install the info files for).
install-info can than create the dir files that each flavour
defaults to by processing the respective info.d directory. (We would
still need separate subdirs in the info-path to deal with name space
pollution like we do now (emacs21/Gnus-1, misc/Gnus-1), but at least
that situation is not made worse.
If all the standard info files that come with the emacsen
flavour are set at level 50 (50emacs.info, 50Gnus.info), then the
stand alone package can install the snippet as 40Gnus.info, to get
precedence over the native implementation; and emacs20 only packages
shall not taint the info tree of other emacsen.
Unless we codify these separate dir files, and separate
subdirs in the info-path for info files, and a schema similar to the
various info.d directories, problems like the one in this bug report
shall continue to affect us.
manoj
--
Life begins at the centerfold and expands outward. Miss November,
1966
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
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