Improve access to documentation in Info format (was: Proposal: Include C Manual from RMS in Emacs git, and/or release)

[Suhail Singh]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> Should we recruit people to package it for various kinds of distros?

While I am unable to volunteer time for this, I can nevertheless point
out two constructive steps that could be taken that would improve
matters for users.  In no particular order:

1. Providing an "easy" way for users to see available info manuals and
   install them.  Easiness here is defined in terms of number of
   invocations (either in Bash or within Emacs) that are necessary for
   users to either view the list of available manuals or to install some
   of them.  This could be done by spending development effort to
   provide packages for various distributions.  Alternatively, effort
   could perhaps be better utilized by packaging the existing info
   manuals into a (relatively) distribution-agnostic packaging system
   such as, say, Guix or GNU ELPA or NonGNU ELPA.
2. Make it easier to generate and perhaps also provide, via 1, Info
   manuals for packages that use other documentation generation systems.
   A popular candidate to target in this regard is Sphinx.  Sphinx has
   some existing support, IIUC, to generate Texinfo output.  However,
   that generation can, at times, have warts/bugs.  My understanding is
   that resolution of these bugs isn't prioritized by the existing
   Sphinx community.  It is possible that they simply aren't aware of
   these issues.  Investing effort into reporting and resolving such
   issues to improve Sphinx's support for output in Texinfo format would
   help.

-- 
Suhail