GNU Manuals in Info/HTML format via Guix?

GNU Manuals in Info/HTML format via Guix?

[Jeremy Bryant]

Hi Guix developers,

The GNU Project's documentation format is Texinfo.
How about distributing some or many Texinfo manuals through Guix, is
this something that is consistent with previous norms in Guix?

Following a discussion on emacs-devel, several people suggested that
GNU Guix may be a a good way to contemplate this distribution mechanism,
for obvious GNU-related reasons.

We discussed both a comprehensive solution for Info manuals, as well as
specific cases such as RMS's C manual (c.info) which is not part of a
software project.

WDYT?

Re: GNU Manuals in Info/HTML format via Guix?

[Suhail Singh]

Jeremy Bryant <jb@jeremybryant.net> writes:

> The GNU Project's documentation format is Texinfo.  How about
> distributing some or many Texinfo manuals through Guix, is this
> something that is consistent with previous norms in Guix?

Guix has had SICP available via Info format since 2016:
<https://packages.guix.gnu.org/packages/sicp/20180718-3.bda03f7/>.  The
Info file is built directly from the Texinfo source by invoking
makeinfo:
<https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/packages/scheme.scm#n626>.

Packaging becomes even easier when the Texinfo source is available as an
ELPA package.  For comparison, I created a patch for the similar sicp
Emacs package (<https://github.com/webframp/sicp-info>):
<https://issues.guix.gnu.org/74906>.

The package definition is somewhat simpler since it obviates the manual
invocation of makeinfo.

> We discussed both a comprehensive solution for Info manuals, as well
> as specific cases such as RMS's C manual (c.info) which is not part of
> a software project.
>
> WDYT?

Given a standalone Texinfo source that we want to distribute as an Info
manual, creating a corresponding ELPA package repository is especially
effective.  It makes packaging into Guix easier.  Additionally, it makes
the generated Info manual available to users of Emacs who don't use Guix
(via package-vc-install etc).

-- 
Suhail

Re: GNU Manuals in Info/HTML format via Guix?

[Cayetano Santos]

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>dim. 15 déc. 2024 at 22:34, Jeremy Bryant <jb@jeremybryant.net> wrote:

> Following a discussion on emacs-devel, several people suggested that
> GNU Guix may be a a good way to contemplate this distribution mechanism,
> for obvious GNU-related reasons.

Remember you always have the possibility to create a dedicated guix
channel, external but complementary to guix upstream itself, to
distribute manuals. This would about any additional overload on guix
maintenance tasks.

--
Cayetano Santos
GnuPG Key:   https://meta.sr.ht/~csantosb.pgp
FingerPrint: CCB8 1842 F9D7 058E CD67 377A BF5C DF4D F6BF 6682

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Re: GNU Manuals in Info/HTML format via Guix?

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hello,

Cayetano Santos <csantosb@inventati.org> writes:

>>dim. 15 déc. 2024 at 22:34, Jeremy Bryant <jb@jeremybryant.net> wrote:
>
>> Following a discussion on emacs-devel, several people suggested that
>> GNU Guix may be a a good way to contemplate this distribution mechanism,
>> for obvious GNU-related reasons.
>
> Remember you always have the possibility to create a dedicated guix
> channel, external but complementary to guix upstream itself, to
> distribute manuals. This would about any additional overload on guix
> maintenance tasks.

Well, the topic being GNU manuals, they'd be more than at home in GNU
Guix.  Typically though they come with the packages themselves, such as
'libc.info.gz' which is shipped with glibc.

I think Guix would be a fine place to have them packaged and made
available.  We already have the C manual you mentioned; it's a great
read!  You can read it with

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
$ guix shell info-reader c-intro-and-ref -- info c'
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

More info on this package:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
$ guix show c-intro-and-ref
name: c-intro-and-ref
version: 0.0.0-1.47e5a23
outputs:
+ out: tout
systems: x86_64-linux i686-linux
dependencies: texinfo@6.8
location: gnu/packages/c.scm:83:4
homepage: https://www.gnu.org/
license: FDL 1.3+
synopsis: GNU C Language Intro and Reference  
description: This manual explains the C language for use with the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) on the
+ GNU/Linux system and other systems.  We refer to this dialect as GNU C.  If you already know C, you can use
+ this as a reference manual.
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

-- 
Thanks,
Maxim

Re: GNU Manuals in Info/HTML format via Guix?

[Divya Ranjan]

Hello, Jeremy,
Jeremy Bryant <jb@jeremybryant.net> writes:

> Hi Guix developers,
>
> The GNU Project's documentation format is Texinfo.
> How about distributing some or many Texinfo manuals through Guix, is
> this something that is consistent with previous norms in Guix?

I believe this is certainly feasible, and desirable. Since Guix itself relies a lot on functioning with info for its documentation requirements.

> Following a discussion on emacs-devel, several people suggested that
> GNU Guix may be a a good way to contemplate this distribution mechanism,
> for obvious GNU-related reasons.
>
> We discussed both a comprehensive solution for Info manuals, as well as
> specific cases such as RMS's C manual (c.info) which is not part of a
> software project.

As Maxim noted, the particular manual already exists. But we need to think about how exactly to package the Info manuals. Since Guix’s process of packaging is a bit differently organized, we’d have to figure out where exactly should the package definitions for these manuals live in the Guix source tree. I see that the C manual is in gnu/packages/c.scm and SICP in gnu/packages/scheme.scm, so maybe each manual could go into the relevant program/language’s guile module. Or, should we have a module just for the Info manuals? I see gnu/packages/texinfo.scm and it has mostly a few packages related to TeXinfo readers, could we put them there, or only the miscellaneous ones?

Those more knowledgeable about Guix’s source-tree management should shed light on this.

Regards,
-- 
Divya Ranjan,
Philosophy, Mathematics, Libre Software.

Re: GNU Manuals in Info/HTML format via Guix?

[Björn Bidar]

First of all I want to quickly write that I was staying quite as I'm not
a Guix guy but just interested in extending and improving the distribution
of info manuals.

Divya Ranjan <divya@subvertising.org> writes:

> Hello, Jeremy,
> Jeremy Bryant <jb@jeremybryant.net> writes:
>
>> Hi Guix developers,
>>
>> The GNU Project's documentation format is Texinfo.
>> How about distributing some or many Texinfo manuals through Guix, is
>> this something that is consistent with previous norms in Guix?
>
> I believe this is certainly feasible, and desirable. Since Guix itself
> relies a lot on functioning with info for its documentation
> requirements.

I think Guix could serve as the showcase project on how to best
integrate and distribute info manuals in distributions.
For my efforts that Guix has been that. If I was looking for an info
manual for something it almost all the time I found it at Guix.
The only exception was the manual of Lua but for that one there was only
one manual conversion very long time ago.

Re: GNU Manuals in Info/HTML format via Guix?

[Divya Ranjan]

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I plan to begin working towards this to package GNU Manuals. But, I wish to ask, where should I collect these manuals from? They aren't at a centralized place, I guess? So I should look for them one-by-one through the FSF Directory?

And Guix users/devs, is there a way to figure our whether a GNU Manual is already packaged with its parent package (of which it is a manual) or not?


I plan to first port them to my Guix channel [0] and then send patches upstream.

[0]: https://codeberg.org/divyaranjan/divya-lambda

Regards,

On 18 December 2024 01:20:58 GMT, Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer@gmail.com> wrote:
>Hello,
>
>Cayetano Santos <csantosb@inventati.org> writes:
>
>>>dim. 15 déc. 2024 at 22:34, Jeremy Bryant <jb@jeremybryant.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Following a discussion on emacs-devel, several people suggested that
>>> GNU Guix may be a a good way to contemplate this distribution mechanism,
>>> for obvious GNU-related reasons.
>>
>> Remember you always have the possibility to create a dedicated guix
>> channel, external but complementary to guix upstream itself, to
>> distribute manuals. This would about any additional overload on guix
>> maintenance tasks.
>
>Well, the topic being GNU manuals, they'd be more than at home in GNU
>Guix.  Typically though they come with the packages themselves, such as
>'libc.info.gz' which is shipped with glibc.
>
>I think Guix would be a fine place to have them packaged and made
>available.  We already have the C manual you mentioned; it's a great
>read!  You can read it with
>
>--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
>$ guix shell info-reader c-intro-and-ref -- info c'
>--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>
>More info on this package:
>
>--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
>$ guix show c-intro-and-ref
>name: c-intro-and-ref
>version: 0.0.0-1.47e5a23
>outputs:
>+ out: tout
>systems: x86_64-linux i686-linux
>dependencies: texinfo@6.8
>location: gnu/packages/c.scm:83:4
>homepage: https://www.gnu.org/
>license: FDL 1.3+
>synopsis: GNU C Language Intro and Reference  
>description: This manual explains the C language for use with the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) on the
>+ GNU/Linux system and other systems.  We refer to this dialect as GNU C.  If you already know C, you can use
>+ this as a reference manual.
>--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>
>-- 
>Thanks,
>Maxim
>

Divya Ranjan, Mathematics, Philosophy and Libre Software

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Re: GNU Manuals in Info/HTML format via Guix?

[Simon Tournier]

Hi,

On Sun, 15 Dec 2024 at 22:34, Jeremy Bryant <jb@jeremybryant.net> wrote:

> The GNU Project's documentation format is Texinfo.
> How about distributing some or many Texinfo manuals through Guix, is
> this something that is consistent with previous norms in Guix?
>
> Following a discussion on emacs-devel, several people suggested that
> GNU Guix may be a a good way to contemplate this distribution mechanism,
> for obvious GNU-related reasons.
>
> We discussed both a comprehensive solution for Info manuals, as well as
> specific cases such as RMS's C manual (c.info) which is not part of a
> software project.

Some Info manuals which are not part of any software are distributed by
Guix; for example see the Guix package ’gnu-standards’.

Well, I think you are asking two questions. (1) Can Guix distribute
Texinfo manuals using another format as HTML?  Well, since ’makeinfo’
supports(*) HTML output, the answer seems yes. :-) Something under
share/html in addition to share/info; perhaps.

(2) Can we package any Texinfo manual and distribute it?  Yes.  Although
maybe it would require a dedicated build system in order to avoid each
time the same sequence of ’invoke’.

Cheers,
simon


(*) makeinfo --html: maybe we need to check if the Guix package of
    texinfo is correctly configured to output HTML.

Re: GNU Manuals in Info/HTML format via Guix?

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ 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. ]]]

Guix is a GNU/Linux distribution, designed for building packages.

The task here is to distribute Info manuals in a few
platform-independent non-source forms, perhaps Info and HTML.  Perhaps
PDF files too.  That is so much simpler than what Guix has to do that
using Guix for this would be a quick and dirty hack.

The task here can be done with something much simpler, and if we
decide to do it, writing a clean solution won't take very long.
And it will be simpler to understand than Guix.
-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: GNU Manuals in Info/HTML format via Guix?

[Divya Ranjan]

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Greetings for a New Year, Richard,

> The task here is to distribute Info manuals in a few platform-independent non-source forms, perhaps Info and HTML. Perhaps PDF files too. That is so much simpler than what Guix has to do that using Guix for this would be a quick and dirty hack.

Indeed, I agree with you here. Though, a special aspect of Guix is that it is _both_ and independent GNU/Linux distribution, and a package manager that can be hosted on any foreign GNU/Linux distribution whether Debian or Trisquel.

That said, the problem here is that distributing the manuals through Guix now limits them to users of Guix (package manager and distribution). And that is not what we want, the manuals should be distributed so that anyone can have them regardless of which distribution they use.

> The task here can be done with something much simpler, and if we
decide to do it, writing a clean solution won't take very long. And it will be simpler to understand than Guix.

I agree it would be simpler than installing and learning Guix, but can you hint at what such a solution might look like? Manuals are usually distributed as packages, and package management of most (Guix is an exception) GNU/Linux distributions is painfully isolated and idiosyncratic to the particular system.

Can we create a single repository containing all of the manuals, which then acts as the main source from which all GNU/Linux distributions can fetch and update?

I believe the construction of a system to _manage_ such manuals is relatively much simple, but it is the distribution that I'm afraid would be complicated.

Regards,
Divya Ranjan, Mathematics, Philosophy and Libre Software

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