Re: Emacs cvs newbie problems

[Richard Stallman]

    As Karl Berry explained: that's a feature.  I don't want my own info
    files end up in /usr; my local stuff belongs to /usr/local -- stuff
    provided by the system belongs to /usr.

I am not convinced that Info files "belong" in these two places, but
let's suppose you have put Info files for installed packages in both
places.  (You can certainly do that if you want to.)

    The "real" problem is, Emacs resp. info (the binary) will collaps
    /usr/share/info/dir and /usr/local/share/info/dir into one and the same
    TOC _unconditionally_.

This merging is absolutely necessary.  Since both groups of packages
are available to an ordinary user, when person runs Info, an ordinary
user should see an Info dir that lists both groups of packages.

      Thus I cannot view the Emacs manual coming with
    the system (21.2) and the one I installed on my own (21.3.50 in
    /usr/local/...) at the same time easily.

The word "thus" is misleading; it implies that the merging
of the Info directories is solely responsible for this consequence.
I don't think that is true, and I think that it would be very hard
to avoid this consequence.