Re: [PATCH 5/6] gnu: mit-scheme: Generate and install documentation.

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Federico Beffa <beffa@ieee.org> skribis:

> For PDFs, it depends on the type and quality of the manual. If it is
> short and/or poor, then nobody will spend hours reading it. But if the
> manual is good and long, then there is a chance that people will spend
> a lot of time reading it and it would be nice to have a good quality
> environment to read it (again, I'm talking about font graphics
> rendering).

I agree that rendering is much better in PDF.

> This is analogous to making public buildings suitable for people with
> wheel-chairs, ... may people don't care, until they are affected :-(

I disagree with the analogy.  On a computer, I find it simply less
convenient to browse PDFs than to browse Info, and that outweighs the
better rendering quality.  (As it turns out, Info is also much more
usable for people using a Braille reader.)

When I want to read a complete manual, I prefer the paper version,
though.

> Well, the discussion is about this sentence:
>
>    I just realized that its documentation is in Texinfo format.  What about
>    simply installing the Info format like we do for other GNU packages, and
>    not the PDF/PS/DVI version?
>
> I can't find: why don't we put the PDF/PS/DVI in a different output.

You mean systematically?

There are several reasons Guix does not systematically provide PDF
manuals for GNU packages:

  1. We follow the GNU Standards, which is that ‘make install’ installs
     only Info by default.

  2. There would be technical complications with building PDFs
     systematically (TeX Live is huge, has a lot of dependencies, etc.)

  3. PDFs are quite big and (so I thought) inconvenient when reading on
     a screen, though I now understand that not everyone feels the same.

  4. Until now there hasn’t been demand for it.

So, back to MIT Scheme, what about adding PDFs in a “doc” output, and
installing Info only in “out”?

Regarding the rest of GNU packages, I’m very much in favor of the status
quo, possibly with exceptions like this on a case-by-case basis.

Let me know if you think this is not explicit enough!

Thanks,
Ludo’.