Re: Problems with "info autoconf" and similar

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 17:36:29 +0100
> From: Stepan Kasal <address@hidden>
> 
>   according to my experience, people who run "info autoconf" expect
> to get the Autoconf manual, not "autoconf Invocation".
> Similarly for "info automake" or "info find".
> 
> Could the behaviour of the info reader be changed somehow to
> eliminate these frustrations?

It probably could (although I don't think anyone actively maintains
the Info reader anymore), but I doubt if that'd be a good idea.  See
below.

> Two suggestions, any of them would solve the problem:
> 
> 1) the dir items named "foo Invocation" would be used only if no
> other item matches, unless --usage was given.

This is limited to the example you saw.  What about "Running FOO", or
"Invoking FOO", or "FOO commandline options", or...

Take a look at the code inside the reader that implements the --usage
option: it needs to jump through the hoops to intuit the name of the
node, because there are so many different variants.

> 2) if there is a "foo.info" file available in the info path, it would
> be preferred to what is specified in the dir file.

That would be breaking back compatibility too harshly, I think.

On balance, I think it's much easier if you simply edit your DIR file
to do what you want.