Re: Extending Info-directory-list. There's got to be a better way.

[David Masterson <David.Masterson@synopsys.com>]

>>>>> Alan Mackenzie writes:

> I recently added the following to my .emacs, after much (too much)
> searching of the docs:

> (eval-after-load "info"
>   '(progn (info-initialize)
>         (push "/usr/src/packages/BUILD/emacs-21.1/info/"
>               Info-directory-list))) 

> This was the only way I found of appending to the front of
> Info-directory-list which works regardless of whether or not Info
> has already been loaded (for example, by desktop).

> Surely there's got to be a better way?  One that doesn't involve
> arcane constructions like eval-after-load and calling functions like
> info-initialise which feel like they ought to be internal private
> functions rather than public functions.

> Anybody got any ideas to share?

Info-directory-list is one of the areas that needs work in both Emacs
and XEmacs.  For instance, Info-default-directory-list seems to have
been obsoleted in XEmacs.  That means that your code has to be
tailored to the particular Emacsen (for instance, info-initialize does
not exist in XEmacs).  Another problem that comes up is that the order
of Info-directory-list is very important.

What happens if you just do this?

(add-to-list 'Info-directory-list
             "/usr/src/packages/BUILD/emacs-21.1/info/" t)

Somebody needs to rewrite Info such that, when it constructs the
directory node, it sorts it on the basis of @dircategory and @direntry
so that the organization of the directory node will not be dependent
on the order of the directories in Info-directory-list.  Of course,
that assumes a fairly standard Info file setup.  :-\

-- 
David Masterson                David DOT Masterson AT synopsys DOT com
Sr. R&D Engineer               Synopsys, Inc.
Software Engineering           Sunnyvale, CA