Re: Documentation bugs to do with text2dvi

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Ken

On Wed, Mar 01, 2017 at 17:27:28 -0500, Ken Brown wrote:
> On 3/1/2017 4:45 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > Hello, texinfo.

> > I've just installed texinfo 6.1, and am having difficulty generating a
> > .dvi file.  I've encountered inadequate documentation, trying to do
> > this.

> > First problem: I do

> >     $ texi2dvi cc-mode.texi

> > , and get the error message:

> >     /usr/bin/texi2dvi: texinfo.tex appears to be broken.
> >     This may be due to the environment variable TEX set to something
> >     other than (plain) tex, a corrupt texinfo.tex file, or
> >     to tex itself simply not working.

> > This is a misleading message.  texinfo.tex is not "broken", it is
> > missing entirely.  The environment variable TEX is not documented in the
> > texinfo manual, so that bit of the error message is not useful.  This is
> > surely a documentation bug.

> > On searching the texinfo manual, page "Printed Books" asserts that

> >     Texinfo provides a file 'texinfo.tex' that contains information
> >     (definitions or "macros") that TeX uses when it typesets a Texinfo
> >     file.

> > This appears not to be true.  I installed texinfo-6.1 in Gentoo
> > GNU/Linux, and no such file was to be found.  This is at best unclarity
> > in the manual.

> > Later on in this page, it says:

> >     You can get the latest version of 'texinfo.tex' from the Texinfo
> >     home page, <http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/>.

> > I'm guessing here, but it seems to me that texinfo.tex is _not_
> > distributed with texinfo (why not?) and the user has to go to the
> > trouble of downloading it separately.  Why does this manual page not say
> > this explicitly?  I'm not particularly interested in getting the
> > _latest_ version of this file.  I just want _any_ working version.

> > Even assuming I do get a texinfo.tex, what am I supposed to do with it?
> > Where am I meant to put it, and how am I meant to tell texi2dvi where to
> > look?  Where in the manual is this documented?  I couldn't find it
> > anywhere.

> > For now, I'm going back to texinfo 4.13, with which I can actually
> > generate .dvi output.  It would be nice to be able to do so in texinfo
> > 6.1, too.  The current manual doesn't tell me how to do this in
> > sufficient detail.

> Hi Alan,

Thanks for the quick reply.

> Upstream Texinfo does indeed provide texinfo.tex.  The fact that it's 
> missing in the Gentoo texinfo package is due to Gentoo's packaging.  A 
> quick google search seems to indicate that it's provided by Gentoo's 
> texlive-texinfo package.

The file indeed is in Gentoo's texlive-texinfo package (thanks for
telling me about this), and I actually had this installed when I tried to
run texi2dvi.

Again, the texinfo manual doesn't tell me how to tell texi2dvi how to find
texinfo.tex.  This is surely a documentation bug.  I still don't know how
to run texi2dvi.

> Ken

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).