GNU bug report logs - #57108
Time to retire texinfmt.el

Previous Next

Full log

Message #8 received at 57108 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Stefan Kangas <stefan <at> marxist.se>
To: 57108 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#57108: Time to retire texinfmt.el
Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2022 05:25:03 -0700

Stefan Kangas <stefan <at> marxist.se> writes:

> It seems like it does nothing that makeinfo doesn't already do better,
> and maintaining it separately from the texinfo project seems like
> duplicate and wasted effort.

I found it instructive to run `M-x texinfo-format-buffer' in
"doc/misc/org.texi", then `C-x C-s' to save the file "org.info", and
then run the following command from the command line:

    diff -u info/org.info doc/misc/org.info

This demonstrates that texinfmt.el would need *a lot* of work to produce
output that of the same high quality makeinfo.  It leaves things out
from the output, can't handle some markup, mishandles quote characters,
etc., etc.

Just to give an idea:

    diff -u info/org.info doc/misc/org.info | wc -l
    => 44325

Previous Next

GNU bug tracking system
Copyright (C) 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1997,2003 nCipher Corporation Ltd, 1994-97 Ian Jackson.