Re: Improve access to documentation in Info format

[Björn Bidar]

Suhail Singh <suhailsingh247@gmail.com> writes:

> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>
>>   > Agreed, natural markup may not be a substitute for Texinfo.  And yet,
>>   > there may still be utility in providing _best effort_ but "visibly
>>   > wrong" Info manuals for packages that use other documentation generation
>>   > systems (for instance, Sphinx).
>>
>> I agree -- and isn't this what they do now?
>
> It depends on who you mean by "they".
>
> If by "they" you mean packagers, then no that is not what generally
> happens.  If by "they" you mean users who are interested in perusing
> documentation in Info format, then they _could_ do so, but that misses
> the "value" I was alluding to - which was about making something which
> is possible today, convenient (as opposed to making something that's not
> possible today, possible).
>
> However, going back to our exchange from a few responses before, if we
> make progress on [1] then the above (access to Info manuals generated by
> translating-from-other-formats) would also improve over time.
>
> [1]: Providing an "easy" way for users to see available info manuals and
>      install them.
>
> You suggested:
>
>> The way I see is involves two steps:
>>
>> a, Set up some sort of download repo with all the Info manuals.
>
> A candidate for this could be an ELPA repository (say, NonGNU ELPA).
> Alternatively, this could be the main Guix channel (or another Guix
> channel).
>
> Of these the easiest (from an Emacs user's perspective) would be an ELPA
> repository.  Note that having these be collected in an ELPA archive
> wouldn't preclude them also being packaged in Guix (as happens today
> with various Emacs packages available on various ELPA repositories).
>
> Packages from NonGNU ELPA are easily available for users to install in
> recent versions of Emacs.  Further, since NonGNU ELPA doesn't seek
> copyright assignment from packages, it is more suited to the goal at
> hand.

If we want to improve info in general, Emacs package.el repositories are
not the best option.
It should be easy to package the missing manuals for the major package
formats and possibly provide packages for other distribution which don't
include the manuals. The last option would be to provide download
options for the info files.

Fixing the license of the manuals would also go a long way of including
these manuals. Trying to use the resources of the FSF to reach out and
try to rectify such long standing issues would help very much.
Such things are not possible for individual contributors I'd say.

> Are there reasons why NonGNU ELPA wouldn't be a good place to host such
> Info manuals?
>
>> b. Write software to find the desired manual, fetch it, and install it
>> on your computer.
>
> If the Info manuals were hosted on NonGNU ELPA, then package.el already
> provides this.
>

Emacs specific.