Is any future development needed on 'dir' files?

[Gavin Smith]

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.

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


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".