How to find Info Manuals

How to find Info Manuals

[Robert Thorpe]

I find Info manuals very useful.  The Emacs Info browser is very fast
and well-integrated with Emacs.  The "C-h S" command, is invaluable, it
looks up a symbol in a manual.  For example, if you're editing C code
and you type C-h S near the word "printf" it will bring up the Info page
from the GNU C library manual describing the printf function.  Since the
manual describes related functions together that can be useful, you can
compare "printf" related functions.  It also works on variables and
constants that have standard meanings.  This can be useful even when
using other compilers or libraries, because the manuals describe
standard functions.

Almost all GNU project languages and utilities have manuals in Info
format.  Unfortunately for us users, the Debian people decided that the
GNU Free Documentation License is a "non-free" license.  When the GNU
project switched to using it for manuals the Debian people put them in a
non-free repository.  In my opinion, the behaviour of both sides was
bad.  Debian derivatives like Ubuntu keep that structure.

Here is a list of the packages containing the Info manuals for various
languages and libraries.  In almost all cases the Debian and Ubuntu name
is the same:

* Standard C Library (GNU Libc): glibc-doc.
* Emacs (the whole Emacs manual set): emacs24-common-non-dfsg.
* GNU Awk: gawk-doc.
* Ada 2005 language standard: ada-reference-manual-2012
(ada-reference-manual-info on Ubuntu & old Debian).
* GNU Ada compiler (GNAT): gnat-doc or gnat-4.6-doc.
* GNU Fortran 77 & 95: gfortran-doc.
* Scheme (Guile): guile-1.8-doc-non-dfsg.
* TeX & LaTeX: some info docs are in texlive-base, but they're not complete.
* GNU TexInfo: texinfo-doc-nonfree.
* Autoconf: autoconf-doc.
* Bison: bison-doc.
* GNU m4: m4.
* GNU Make: make-doc.
* Automake: automake.
* Cfengine: cfengine2.
* GNU Maxima: maxima-doc.
* GNU Octave: octave-info.

I know that most of these work properly with C-h S, though I'm not sure
all do.  The Binutils info docs (in binutils-doc) don't support C-h S
AFAIK.

The GNU C++ library was done with Doxygen, it doesn't seem to have an
Info manual.

If no package is available the Info docs can be installed the old
fashioned way using 'sudo install-info infofile'.  Due to a packaging
mistake the Bash info file isn't present it can be found at
http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/.  The TexInfo people provide
the Perl documentation in Info format
http://www.gnu.org/software/perl/manual/ .  No Debian package contains
the main info file for GNU Common Lisp, the packages only contain some
additional manuals, I think that's a packaging mistake.  The best way to
get that manual is from the GCL source tarball.  Somewhere on the internet
there's an info file of the whole Common Lisp Hyperspec, though I can't
find it.

BR,
Robert Thorpe

Re: How to find Info Manuals

[Javier]

In addition to all that you can have the python manuals in info format.
Not straightforward to find, but they are out there.

Code to convert the sphinx/rst documentation to info:
https://bitbucket.org/jonwaltman/sphinx-info
https://bitbucket.org/jonwaltman/rst2texinfo

.texi generation is included in the official sphinx release, but the
quality of the resulting .texi might vary.

The python manual can be downloaded here:
https://github.com/politza/python-info

With MELPA one can M-x package-install python-info
In arch linux you can do yaourt -S python-info
There must exist a debian package with it.

Other libraries docs of python can be compiled to info (numpy, scipy,
django, sphinx itself...).  Other languages like Julia, that use
sphinx/rst docs can also have documentation in texinfo format.

I don't know about much more.  There are some other .info
files scattered around in the web, like the book
'Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs':

http://www.neilvandyke.org/sicp-texi/
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/sicp-info/

It would be very nice if all that stuff were held together somewhere.



Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com> wrote:
> I find Info manuals very useful.  The Emacs Info browser is very fast
> and well-integrated with Emacs.  The "C-h S" command, is invaluable, it
> looks up a symbol in a manual.  For example, if you're editing C code
> and you type C-h S near the word "printf" it will bring up the Info page
> from the GNU C library manual describing the printf function.  Since the
> manual describes related functions together that can be useful, you can
> compare "printf" related functions.  It also works on variables and
> constants that have standard meanings.  This can be useful even when
> using other compilers or libraries, because the manuals describe
> standard functions.
> 
> Almost all GNU project languages and utilities have manuals in Info
> format.  Unfortunately for us users, the Debian people decided that the
> GNU Free Documentation License is a "non-free" license.  When the GNU
> project switched to using it for manuals the Debian people put them in a
> non-free repository.  In my opinion, the behaviour of both sides was
> bad.  Debian derivatives like Ubuntu keep that structure.
> 
> Here is a list of the packages containing the Info manuals for various
> languages and libraries.  In almost all cases the Debian and Ubuntu name
> is the same:
> 
> * Standard C Library (GNU Libc): glibc-doc.
> * Emacs (the whole Emacs manual set): emacs24-common-non-dfsg.
> * GNU Awk: gawk-doc.
> * Ada 2005 language standard: ada-reference-manual-2012
> (ada-reference-manual-info on Ubuntu & old Debian).
> * GNU Ada compiler (GNAT): gnat-doc or gnat-4.6-doc.
> * GNU Fortran 77 & 95: gfortran-doc.
> * Scheme (Guile): guile-1.8-doc-non-dfsg.
> * TeX & LaTeX: some info docs are in texlive-base, but they're not complete.
> * GNU TexInfo: texinfo-doc-nonfree.
> * Autoconf: autoconf-doc.
> * Bison: bison-doc.
> * GNU m4: m4.
> * GNU Make: make-doc.
> * Automake: automake.
> * Cfengine: cfengine2.
> * GNU Maxima: maxima-doc.
> * GNU Octave: octave-info.
> 
> I know that most of these work properly with C-h S, though I'm not sure
> all do.  The Binutils info docs (in binutils-doc) don't support C-h S
> AFAIK.
> 
> The GNU C++ library was done with Doxygen, it doesn't seem to have an
> Info manual.
> 
> If no package is available the Info docs can be installed the old
> fashioned way using 'sudo install-info infofile'.  Due to a packaging
> mistake the Bash info file isn't present it can be found at
> http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/.  The TexInfo people provide
> the Perl documentation in Info format
> http://www.gnu.org/software/perl/manual/ .  No Debian package contains
> the main info file for GNU Common Lisp, the packages only contain some
> additional manuals, I think that's a packaging mistake.  The best way to
> get that manual is from the GCL source tarball.  Somewhere on the internet
> there's an info file of the whole Common Lisp Hyperspec, though I can't
> find it.
> 
> BR,
> Robert Thorpe
> 

Re: How to find Info Manuals

[Emanuel Berg]

Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com> writes:

> I find Info manuals very useful.  The Emacs Info
> browser ...

Good work! Be sure to keep this post and be prepared to
put it into a FAQ and/or the EmacsWiki, and to have it
ready the next time someone asks for online-non-Elisp
documentation in Emacs.

> * Standard C Library (GNU Libc): glibc-doc

'aptitude show' reveals:

    Contains man pages for libpthread functions and the
    complete GNU C Library ChangeLog.  The GNU C
    Library Reference manual has been moved into
    glibc-doc-reference for licensing reasons.

So it is glibc-doc-reference you need for C:

    Contains The GNU C Library Reference manual in
    info, pdf and html format.
    
-- 
underground experts united

Re: How to find Info Manuals

[Emanuel Berg]

Javier <nospam@nospam.com> writes:

> With MELPA one can M-x package-install python-info In
> arch linux you can do yaourt -S python-info There
> must exist a debian package with it.

I don't use Python, but at least in the the Debian
Jessie repositories there is a python3-doc package:

    This is the official set of documentation for the
    interactive high-level object-oriented language
    Python 3 (v3.4). All documents are provided in HTML
    format, some in info format ...

-- 
underground experts united

Re: How to find Info Manuals

[Robert Thorpe]

Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> writes:
> Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com> writes:
...
> So it is glibc-doc-reference you need for C:
>
>     Contains The GNU C Library Reference manual in
>     info, pdf and html format.

I just checked that, Debian and Ubuntu differ here.  On Debian it's
glibc-doc-reference, as you say.  On Ubuntu it's still glibc-doc.

Also, I've found that on Ubuntu the Bash documentation is where it's
supposed to be in bash-doc.

BR,
Rob

Re: How to find Info Manuals

[Emanuel Berg]

Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com> writes:

> I just checked that, Debian and Ubuntu differ here.
> On Debian it's glibc-doc-reference, as you say.  On
> Ubuntu it's still glibc-doc.

OK. 

> Also, I've found that on Ubuntu the Bash
> documentation is where it's supposed to be in
> bash-doc.

OK. On Debian there is zsh-doc:

    This contains the documentation in GNU info and
    HTML formats.

-- 
underground experts united