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Making it possible to use INFOPATH with Emacs info files


From: Reuben Thomas
Subject: Making it possible to use INFOPATH with Emacs info files
Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 21:26:20 +0100 (BST)
User-agent: Alpine 1.00 (DEB 882 2007-12-20)

Because I sometimes install programs in my home directory, I use INFOPATH to specify the system directories plus one in my home directory. However, this gets me into trouble with Emacs, because it takes my INFOPATH for its default info directory list:

  This variable `Info-default-directory-list' is used as the default
  for initializing `Info-directory-list' when Info is started, unless
  the environment variable INFOPATH is set.

which means that if I set INFOPATH, then I don't get access to Emacs's own info files (under /usr/share/info/emacs-22) unless I manually add this path to Info-directory-list.

With info, this works, because info searches subdirectories of INFOPATH directories for files. Emacs seems not to.

It seems to me that Emacs's info reader should always behave like that of the standalone info reader. Hence, Emacs should be made to look in subdirectories of Info-directory-list for info files.

(There's a separate issue that with the present semantics of INFOPATH it's impossible for a user simply to extend the system path. I've written to bug-texinfo@gnu.org about this. One solution would be to allow an empty path segment to mean "insert system path here" as it does with some other path variables. But any such solution should be adopted by the standalone info reader first, I think, to give Emacs a behaviour to follow, rather than the other way around.)

(This bug came up in Debian bug

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=446376

)

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http://rrt.sc3d.org/ | poetry, n.  platitude made obscure




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