Re: Bug#388684: coreutils: "info ls" opens the man page, not the info documentation

[Jim Meyering]

address@hidden (Karl Berry) wrote:
>     > Maybe the better fix would be renaming all the nodes in coreutils.texi 
> to
>     > comply with this convention?
>
> I think the node names should stay as they are.  The convention is
> either "Invoking xxx" or "xxx invocation".
> http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Manual-Structure-Details.html

Hi Karl,

> I originally named the nodes in the coreutils manual (well, it was the
> three *utils at the time) using the latter so that completion would work
> better.
>
> (Aside: a depressing number of GNU manuals don't follow either convention;
> standalone info has a ton of special cases built into it. :()
>
> As for the original report:
>
>> |    Emit "info coreutils 'PROG invocation'" into the man page,
>> |    rather than just "info PROG".  The latter would often fail
>> |    or simply display the man page.
>
> I suppose it is more reliable to say "info coreutils 'PROG invocation'",
> although it seems a shame to replace a simple command with a more complex one.

Another reason to use the more verbose command is to ensure that info
reliably displays the right node.  Even with a proper installation, "info
pr" doesn't display the desired node (as you probably recall).  Instead,
"info" simply displays the first node it finds with a name matching
"pr".  In my case, it is currently the "PreScript" node of a2ps.info.
Without a2ps, it might be the coreutils "Printing text" node.  There are
a handful of other coreutils program names in the same boat.

> What this report really says to me is that the dir file was not
> correctly created by the Debian (or whatever) installation process.  If

Yes, that is the root of the problem.
It came down to a dispute about which of two install-info
programs should be installed.  I'm amazed that it's lasted
so long (it seems it's been at least two years, now).