Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> If we are going to use Texinfo 4 for generating the manuals in the
> next release, the problem that bothered me will not happen in the Info
> files that will be in the release tarball.

Ah, OK, then we can separate the proposed patch into two parts.
The first just adds @documentencoding lines, and can be installed
now.  The second deals with ASCIIfying the info files, a new feature
that can wait until after the feature freeze is over.  I'm attaching
both patches.