Re: [ELPA] New package c-intro-and-ref -- was Re: Proposal: Include C Manual from RMS in Emacs git, and/or release

[Jeremy Bryant <jb@jeremybryant.net>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
> We have learned that there is a general problem with the handling of
> Info manuals so that the community will see they are available.
> Several days ago I asked people to please help look for a general
> solution for this general problem.
>
> Packaging my GNU C Mnaual in Emacs will fix one special case of that
> general problem.  But the general problem will remain.
>
> Fixing special cases instead of general problems won't make a good
> system.  Can we please try to fix this right?

Ideas for discussion:

1.
Extend gnu.org:

There is a table of GNU Manuals here,
https://www.gnu.org/manual/manual.html
Many with Info documents.

If the maintainers of that site could also collate the same documents
into a location accessible programmatically, it would be easier to write
(as suggested by Stefan M), an Emacs ELPA package to download and
install these.


2.
Use NonGNU ELPA:

The Emacs packaging infrastructure already implements installation
mechanisms for Info manuals

How about using this, potentially within NonGNU ELPA rather than ELPA,
to allow an "Info area", to distribute certain Info manuals (not already
captured elsewhere).?

For example, manuals not originally written in Texinfo but converted.

This could even be a thin declaration, something like this to install
Info and HTML.

(define-manual
      ...)