Re: Bug#793067: Bug#792328: info: can no longer find the Emacs manual

[Rob Browning]

Karl Berry <address@hidden> writes:

> As far as I can see, Debian is creating the "problem" by distributing
> two different versions of Emacs at the same time.  So it seems to me the
> answer should come at the same level: Debian could have two different
> directories with the Emacs manuals.  Then no changes are needed anywhere
> else.
>
> An /etc/alternatives-like thing could specify the default, and/or mess
> around with INFOPATH as Gavin mentions, or whatever.
>
> But heck, it's not up to me.  If Gavin and the Emacs maintainers can
> implement whatever you want implemented, more power to all concerned :).

Practically speaking, the issue is that we'd like to have some way to
handle more than one flavor of Emacs (or XEmacs - which appears to be
back in testing).

For Emacs itself, this was an issue that people people cared about
fairly strongly during the Emacs 19 to Emacs 20 transition, though
perhaps it's less significant for the major releases since.

And even ignoring the emacsen, the underlying issue seems to apply to
other programs -- say for example GCC or Guile, where people may well
need to have more than one major version available, and where the info
docs may have internal links to other bundled, version-matching pages
(i.e. calc, org, ediff,...).

So I'm happy to try to accommodate whatever's recommended, but in the
longer run, I'd like to have some supported way for people to install
two major versions of a given program and still be able to easily
traverse whichever documentation they're interested in from both Emacs
and the standalone reader.

Thanks
-- 
Rob Browning
rlb @defaultvalue.org and @debian.org
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