Re: Contributing to Emacs Development

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Miles Bader <address@hidden>
> Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 09:47:42 +0900 (JST)
> 
>   1) Give each version of emacs its own info directory, which is first
>      on the search path, and make sure that all info files that are
>      emacs-version-dependent get put into this directory.  [I think this
>      will work with non-emacs info readers, because they never have this
>      implicit dependency on the `currently running emacs version', so
>      static links will be ok for them]

Sorry, I'm not following: how will this work for non-Emacs Info
readers?  They indeed don't know what version of Emacs are you
running, so they will NOT in general go to the right file.

I'd expect the solution for non-Emacs readers to require the user to
specify the version explicitly.  This works today, but only when you
invoke Info:

        info -f emacs-e20

or, assuming Someone has added an "Emacs 20" entry to
/usr/local/info/DIR

        info "Emacs 20"

However, as soon as you are inside the reader, you have no way of
telling it "when you see a reference to a file `foo', find the variant
of `foo' which came with version 20 of Emacs".  Unless someone hacks
all the cross-references in the file emacs-e20 to say "(foo-e20)Bar"
instead of just "(foo)Bar".  And even then we are left with "C-h C-f"
and the (all too often) example of Gnus from its CVS being installed
in addition to the version which came with Emacs.

A combination of file names, subdirectories, and a suitable $INFOPATH
setting might be able to solve this, but I undestand that some people
don't think messing with $INFOPATH is a Good Thing...