Re: Is any future development needed on 'dir' files?

[Patrice Dumas]

On Sun, Jan 09, 2022 at 08:52:59PM +0000, Gavin Smith wrote:
> I was looking at the TODO file for Texinfo, and reading this again:
> 
> >  - Monitor and improve the dir categories in existing manuals,
> >    following the Free Software Directory categories.  Much mail to
> >    developers has already been sent, what's needed now is to check new
> >    releases and make sure they are using the right categories.
> >    See the util/dir-example in the Texinfo distribution for our current
> >    recommended categories.
> >    For background, see the thread (which discusses a lot of other
> >    issues too) at
> >    http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2002-10/msg00011.html
> >    especially
> >      http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2002-10/msg00090.html
> >      http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2002-10/msg00137.html
> 
> 
> (As you can see, the messages referenced are from 2002.)
> 
> I personally always found the dir file a disorganised mess.  I doubt there
> is much hope now for getting any more consistent categories than there
> already are.
> 
> My feeling is that we should just give up on this.  The dir file works well
> enough for running info from the command linen but it's not something you
> want to look at very much, except when browsing idly to see what documentation
> you have.

This TODO entry seems to me to be still relevant.  But first it seems
to me that the categories in util/dir-example do not match the categories
in https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Category/All.
And then when the categories are updated, someone needs to propose
patches to change manuals as manual categories are still all over the
place...

I propose to remove historical information and change it to two entries

  - update util/dir-example recommended categories based on the Free
    Software Directory categories on a regular basis.

  - Monitor and improve the dir categories in existing manuals, checking
    that the category they appear in the Info main menu follows
    the Free Software Directory categories recorded in util/dir-example.  

Then there is the choice to put those entries to the "will not be implemented
section" or not.  To me a way to think about is, if we add somebody
willing to do that kind of work would we have better things to propose
to do that this one?  The issue with that is that it needs to be redone
every few years to match with the changes in the Free Software Directory
categories and also to handle new manuals.

If this work is done only for the info dir, it is probably not worth it,
although if someone volunteers why not.  But I think that this
categorization should be done for all the formats that we want to use
for a library of Texinfo manuals, to be able to organize all of them.
So it is probably worth it, for instance for the HTML project:

 One suggestion is to have a directory of HTML manuals stored, akin to the
 "dir" file in the Info system.  Browser software could use this directory
 to locate manuals.

It would probably make sense to organize manuals in this directory view
in @dircategory categories too.

> There are other dir-related agenda in that file:
> 
>   - Search all nodes of dir file at startup, then can have
>     INFO-DIR-SEPARATE-GROUPS and other such.  I.e., we could have
>     programs (what is now "Individual utilities") in one node, library
>     functions, in another, etc.  And how about supporting other languages?
>   - Better dir file merging.
>   - Global dir file (as in /etc/conf/dir) and texinfo config file
>     specifying which info directories to search.  From Dale Mellor.
>     http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/private/gnu-prog-discuss/2003q4/000439.html
> 
> (as not everyone will be able to access that message I'll copy it here:)
> 
> infodir inconsistency
> Dale Mellor dale at dmellor.dabsol.co.uk
> Wed Dec 31 19:48:33 EST 2003
> 
> >>>>> "Karl" == Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> writes:
>     Karl> Anyway, I realized there's another issue which makes me believe even
>     Karl> more strongly that autoconf should not change until there's been a
>     Karl> special release of texinfo and emacs -- we have to hardwire looking
>     Karl> for prefix/info in the readers, as well as infodir.
> 
>    Just a thought, but if you are going to change the readers like this why 
> not
> introduce a /etc/info/conf file which points to the info directories, and 
> maybe
> points to a global dir file as well (default /etc/conf/dir)? Only invoke any
> hard-wired defaults if the conf file is missing?
> 
> 
>                                                 Dale

I personnally do not understand what this is about, I would suggest
removing this entry.
 
> 
> None of that gives me an idea of anything that I would like to work on
> or that I can imagine other people working on.  I think it's just not
> specifific enough.  It seems fairly useless having stuff in a TODO file
> nobody cares about, or nobody even understands or remembers what it was for.
> 
> I propose to delete some of these agenda and move others to the "will not
> be implemented section".
> 
>