Re: html texinfo install?

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Tue, 17 Feb 2004, Karl Berry wrote:

>     I am against having separate install targets because GNU makefiles
>     normally install everything by default and that is what users should
>
> No, they don't currently install any Texinfo output format except Info.
> And I don't see any particular reason why they should.  Why install
> HTML, when we're not installing XML, Docbook, PS, PDF, or
> who-knows-what-else?

What I mean is that 'make install' normally installs everything which
is expected to be installed.

>     Installing everything is not a problem for distribution
>     maintainers since they decide which files to package using their
>     distribution tools.
>
> Not as far as GNU goes.  If make install installs HTML, then they have
> to provide HTML in the distribution .tar.gz -- exactly analogous to
> Info.  Otherwise, every *installer* has to have the right version of
> makeinfo installed, which is not feasible.

This is true/reasonable of the source packages (luckily HTML
compresses very well), but there are often several "binary"
installable packages offered for a given source package.  The user can
choose to install a package-doc or package-html install package if
they want the extra documentation.  The package maintainer decides
what the best way is to slice/dice the files in a complete
installation in order to offer end-users more freedom as to what
occupies their disk space.  The package maintainer is very likely to
have the right Texinfo available for the job.

If the HTML files are not distributed with the sources, then one way
to deal with the situation is to have autoconf test for a recent
enough texinfo package, and if it is too old, a warning is generated,
and texinfo-based processing/targets are skipped.

Keep in mind that texinfo is just one method among many (in addition
to 'vi') for generating HTML documentation.  Presuming that the GNU
standards are extended to include HTML, if the user does 'make
install' and the package provides HTML, it should be installed if at
all possible.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden
http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen