Re: @dircategory (Re: Translating Emacs manuals is of strategic importance)

[Gavin Smith <gavinsmith0123@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Jan 06, 2024 at 03:57:24AM -0800, Stefan Kangas wrote:
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> >> If that’s the case, what about using “Translated manuals” for now,
> >> since the number of translated manuals is very low?
> >
> > I'd say the other way around: as long as we have very few
> > translations, keeping them together with the English version is
> > better.
> 
> I'm concerned that they'd get in the way, even if there are only few of
> them.
> 
> How about using something like `Info-streamline-headings' for this:
> 
> - Put manuals under "Translated manuals" for English locales.
> 
> - Move those relevant to the current locale to "Emacs".

> I'd probably take it a step further and completely hide translations (by
> default at least) outside of relevant locales.  We already do basically
> that for the tutorial.

I think it would be a good idea to hide them.  This could be dealt with
by installing translated manuals in a different location.

For example, in my top-level dir node, which I see by running "info",
I have the following lines:

Развој програма
* help2man-sr: (help2man-sr).   Самостално стварање 
                                  странице упутства.

Розробка програмного забезпечення
* help2man-uk: (help2man-uk).   Програма для 
                                  автоматичного створення сторінок 
                                  підручника (man).

软件开发
* help2man-zh_CN: (help2man-zh_CN).
                                自动手册页生成。

These are of no interest to me as I can't read the languages.  This
could potentially get worse if more manuals were translated and the
translations installed by default in the default Info directories.

Any support for supporting different installation directories for
different languages in Texinfo (or elsewhere, e.g. Automake) depends on
users of manuals in other languages explaining what exactly is needed
to support their use cases.

FWIW there is the following in the TODO file of Texinfo:

* Ideas that will not be implemented:

- Support installation of manuals in different languages, along these lines:
  . support a LINGUAS file or variable saying which subdirs LL in the
    source to descend into (under doc/).
  . within each subdir LL, install the info files into $infodir/LL,
    and run install-info on $infodir/LL/dir.
  . info (both emacs and standalone) should read $infodir/$LANG/dir
    as the first dir file, and likewise read info files first from
    $infodir/$LANG, before falling back to $infodir.
  . consider ways to avoid installing images in both places.
    In fact, images probably need to be installed in a subdir
    $infodir/MANUAL/ in the first place, to avoid conflicts of having
    the same image name in different manuals.
  For a test case, see texinfo cvs, with its one translated manual
  (info-fr.texi).
  From Wojciech Polak.
  ... Except, in practice, people just name their manuals with a
  suffix for the language, and that seems to work well enough.  There
  aren't that many manuals even in English, let alone other languages,
  and there are almost no manuals in multiple languages.

The $infodir/LL and $infodir/LL/dir part of this seem like a good idea
to me.  This would require changes in package build and installation
systems (Automake), not necessarily in Texinfo itself.  Since users
can set INFOPATH (or Emacs equivalent) themselves, it is not urgent to
implement special support for language directories per se in 'info'
or 'install-info'.  This could be done once it is clear that people
are actually using installation directories that way.