bug#57108: Time to retire texinfmt.el

bug#57108: Time to retire texinfmt.el

[Stefan Kangas]

Is it worth maintaining texinfmt.el?

I guess the `texinfo-format-region' command seems marginally useful on
paper, but its output is too different from `Info-mode' to be very
useful in practice.

The `texi2info' and `texinfo-format-buffer' commands are probably better
replaced with a wrapper around the "makeinfo" command.  (They also don't
work; see Bug#57107.)

So this file looks like more of a historical artifact than something
that is actually useful these days.  Note that it dates back to 1985,
according to the copyright header, and was entered into VCS in 1991.

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.

bug#57108: Time to retire texinfmt.el

[Stefan Kangas]

Stefan Kangas <stefan@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

bug#57108: Time to retire texinfmt.el

[Stefan Kangas]

I've tested `texinfo-format-buffer' with several manuals from GNU/NonGNU
ELPA packages.

Only one file worked:

    magit/docs/magit-section.texi

In all other cases I tried I got errors

    bnf-mode/bnf-mode.texi

       (error "@comma is not handled by texinfo")

    magit/docs/magit.texi

        (error "Unmatched @end example") ; false positive

    org-roam/doc/org-roam.texi

        (error "@LaTeX is not handled by texinfo")

    slime/doc/slime.texi

        (error "@codequoteundirected is not handled by texinfo")

    swiper/doc/ivy.texi

        (error "@indentedblock is not handled by texinfo")

    use-package/use-package.texi

        (error "Unmatched @end example") ; false positive

The fact that this command has been this broken for so long without
anyone complaining should give some indication of how much used it sees.