On 5 March 2015 at 08:42, Akim Demaille <[email protected]> wrote: > I kinda discovered that info can read compressed files. > This is excellent news, but it seems poorly documented. > I can find information about install-info being able to > read compressed files and compressed dir files, but that's > it!
There is mention of it under the -f option at http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/info-stnd/info-stnd.html#Invoking-Info. In the version of the documentation in the current development repository, this description is moved up to the top because it is not just done when using the -f option, so it will be more visible. Compressed files can opened at other times than when invoking Info, however; the most common case would be following a cross-reference, either in standalone Info or Emacs Info. As you say, this does not seem to be documented anywhere. > > Shouldn't install-info also support a means to compress > when installing? > Contrary to expectations, install-info doesn't copy the file to the installation directory, it only updates the dir file. As long as this is the case, I think compression should be done separately, probably in Makefile rules. > This is prompted by the people at MacPorts that are considering > not installing the documentation of Bison, to save disk space. > The info file is 537KB uncompressed, 147KB with gzip, and 112KB > with bzip2. > > Shouldn't Automake also help install compressed files? > Shouldn't the GNU Coding Standards promote installing compressed > info files and man pages? > Some GNU/Linux distributions already compress the info files, but as you say it doesn't seem to be done automatically by the Automake rules. I guess you could propose an option for Automake to do this. Maybe there could be a "INFO_COMPRESSION_PROGRAM" variable, or options like "info-gzip", "info-bzip2", "info-xz" (mirroring the "dist-xz" etc. options.) Automake manual for reference: http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/Texinfo.html#Texinfo
