Re: [help-texinfo] Non ascii to pdf.

[Karl Berry]

    texi2pdf is more or less to be deprecated wholesale, right?

No, texinfo.tex and texi2{dvi,pdf} will continue to exist and be
maintained.  We must not require LaTeX merely to typeset a GNU manual!

The point of the LaTeX backend is precisely to support things like
Cyrillic, which would be a massive undertaking to implement in
texinfo.tex.

The LaTeX backend will also give much more flexibility to
wasting^Wspending time playing with the layout, for those who like to do
that.  (Which is precisely not the purpose of Texinfo, but that doesn't
stop people from wanting to do it. :)

      /usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo/txi-ru.tex

The txi-LL.tex files exist in the original distribution.  It is
possible, with enough work, to typeset with the Cyrillic fonts available
with TeX.  I just don't have any realistic hope of integrating it all.

    So there seems to be a (possibly forgotten) path through old
    texi2{dvi,pdf} land? 

It is not forgotten.  It is just limited.

    no CJK, or no Cyrillic plus German...

I don't think that's necessarily the case, but since it's all
hypothetical anyway, it's not worth spending more time debating it :).

    Is there any way one might help (with limited time)?
    
With "limited time"?  Probably not.  It's not like it's a trivial task.
The current plan is something like this:

1) Patrice and I finish up the tidbits to start texinfo 5.0 pretests.
2) release that and deal with inevitable urgent fallout.
3) a latex backend is one of the highest priorities for Patrice for
after the release.

We'll see how it goes.  Everything takes time.  We're all volunteers.

Best,
k