Re: Standard directory for documentation in EPUB format

[Gavin Smith]

On Wed, Nov 09, 2022 at 09:36:44PM +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > From: Gavin Smith <gavinsmith0123@gmail.com>
> > Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2022 19:20:53 +0000
> > Cc: bug-texinfo@gnu.org
> > 
> > It's not clear that there should be a dedicated directory for installed
> > EPUB files, or that people would install lots of these.  I'm not too
> > clear on how people would use the EPUB output.
> > 
> > The 'docdir' in "(standards)Directory Variables" appears sufficient:
> > 
> > 'docdir'
> >      The directory for installing documentation files (other than Info)
> >      for this package.  By default, it should be
> >      '/usr/local/share/doc/YOURPKG', but it should be written as
> >      '$(datarootdir)/doc/YOURPKG'.  (If you are using Autoconf, write it
> >      as '@docdir@'.)  The YOURPKG subdirectory, which may include a
> >      version number, prevents collisions among files with common names,
> >      such as 'README'.
> > 
> > htmldir, dvidir etc. all default to ${docdir} by default (with
> > autoconf/automake).  There would seem to be no benefit to
> > creating an epubdir along the same lines, in my opinion.
> 
> I thought you were saying that EPUB should be treated the same as
> HTML, PDF, DVI, etc., in which case the EPUB directory should default
> to docdir, but, like htmldir and dvidir, allow installing EPUB in
> another place.  That made sense to me, but then came your last
> sentence and confused me, because it actually says EPUB will NOT have
> its variable, unlike those other formats.  Such a difference should be
> due to some valid reason, IMO, but you don't say what would such a
> reason be.

Basically because we don't really know how people will use EPUB format
and it seems like a lot of trouble (for the Standards document, autoconf
and automake) to add extra rules for EPUB, which will be there forever,
when they may not even be necessary in the first place.  This is just my
opinion, though.