Re: Documentation for "Clone Buffers" (corrected version)

[karl@freefriends.org (Karl Berry)]

    which places into dir buffer its own huge index with 1700 entries!

The underlying issue, to my knowledge, is that for info to be as
convenient as man, it needs to have dir entries for every command, every
function, etc.  (This is different than every index entry, although of
course the bulk of the index consists of such names.)  This has been an
unresolved issue with the info system since day 1.

Having a single dir buffer with every possible name is infeasible, as
you say.  It's obviously not useful for the user to have to browse
through a dir node with 1700 entries from glibc.  On the other hand, I
can't exactly call it a "bug" in the glibc manual, it's trying to do the
only thing available.  (I assume it's not literally putting every index
entry into dir, just the function etc. names -- that was true last time
I looked at it.)

The only long-term solution I've been able to think of is to allow
subnodes of (dir) and have the info readers look through the subnodes
when asked for a given top-level name -- but not load or display the
info in all the subnodes when showing the dir node itself.

If anyone has any other bright ideas, just speak up ...

thanks,
k