Re: Bug#792328: info: can no longer find the Emacs manual
Hi Gavin, hi Rob,
since Gavin agreed, I include both the Debian bug report as well as
the texinfo bug list and the Debian TeX maintainer list.
On Tue, 21 Jul 2015, Gavin Smith wrote:
> Does that mean that the elisp manual is installed under
> "emacs-24/elisp.info"
Yes.
> and somehow, when the emacs Info file that was
> opened was "emacs-24/emacs.info" following a cross-reference to
> "(elisp)" will find "emacs-24/elisp.info"?
Well, that would be nice, but it doesn't work. Not even searching
for it does work: When I press /elisp I see:
Cannot find node '(emacs.info.gz)Printed Books'.
> Moreover there are many
> Info files under the "emacs-24" subdirectory that describe various
> Emacs modes, etc.?
Right.
> Perhaps the symlink could be to this directory, instead of to
> individual info files (/usr/share/info/emacs ->
> /usr/share/info/emacs-24), and the emacs subdirectory could be
> included in INFOPATH. This would only be used for packages like emacs
Well, that helps indeed in the cross referencing.
> Another idea which is relevant to the problem of handling multiple
> versions of manuals is one I had here:
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2014-08/msg00025.html
Hmm, I didn't understand why that could be a solution.
>
> >An idea I had, which could help in
> this situation, is to have something like the functionality of the
> "--all" option available whenever you follow a link. There would be a
> variable to control what happens when you follow a link. I can think
> of several choices: select the first Info file found in the search
> path and look for a man page if that fails, as happens at current;
> look for an Info file under the same subdirectory as the current file
> (to stay within the documentation for one "prefix hierarchy"); or
> tcreate a menu with all dir entries, Info files and a man page (as
> --all does). When following a link in a man page, you could then
> choose between the man page or the applicable Info page.
I see three options:
* the current status: only a flat dir is allowed, but one can use
the INFOPATH variable to adjust searching.
In this case I am not sure how several copies of the same manual
would behave without any special options
* the current status II: all files are installed into infodir, and
multiple copies are renamed to include the version.
That needs work from the packagers, since as far as I see this
is not normally supported by the texi2info script. One would
need to change manually all internal links to include the
version number
* my wish list: support of sub directories and links within subdirs
in this case selecting a link would *first* search for the
respective file in the same directory as the info file
currently reading in info, and if that is not found,
in the normal INFOPATH
That would allow installation of various versions of the emacs
(and other programs) manual into infopath/emacs24/... and
keep the local links as is.
I *MIGHT* find time to look into that in the info reader and implement
it in the c source code, but currently I am low on time due to work
requirements (teaching, conferences, etc).
Within Debian we now have enough time till the next release to work
that out properly, but I would prefer something that goes in line with
upstream TeX Info, as I don't want to have any special Debianitis
again (similar to install-info odyssee over too many years).
All the best
Norbert
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PREINING, Norbert http://www.preining.info
JAIST, Japan TeX Live & Debian Developer
GPG: 0x860CDC13 fp: F7D8 A928 26E3 16A1 9FA0 ACF0 6CAC A448 860C DC13
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