Bug#1012612: texinfo: Info documentation links to missing "pod2texi" manual
Package: texinfo
Version: 6.8-4+b1
Severity: minor
Dear Maintainer,
As I'm sure you know, when the "texinfo" package is installed, it creates
`/usr/share/info/texinfo.info.gz`, and a metadata chunk from the preamble of
that file is merged into `/usr/share/info/dir`.
For texinfo specifically, the metadata chunk includes the following line:
* pod2texi: (pod2texi)Invoking pod2texi.
As I understand it, this is a hyperlink to the node named "Invoking pod2texi"
inside the "pod2texi" info file. Unfortunately, there is no such info file.
There *is* an "Invoking pod2texi" node in the "texinfo" info file, but it does
not actually describe invoking pod2texi. Instead, it explains that pod2texi is
a demonstration of itself, being a Perl script with POD documentation, so you
can get a TeXinfo file by running:
pod2texi $(which pod2texi)
The actual content of the pod2texi documentation can be read at
http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/pod2texi.html or (in Debian) via
`man pod2texi`, but follows manpage conventions and doesn't contain an
"Invoking pod2texi" section.
Probably the easiest fix is just to remove that line from the texinfo.info
metadata chunk, since `/usr/bin/info` and similar tools fall back to looking up
a manpage if there's no info reference, so `info pod2texi` will give people the
information they want instead of an error message.
The second easiest fix would be to change "(pod2texi)" in the link to
"(texinfo)", and then "info pod2texi" would take you to the intended node...
although since that node says "go look elsewhere for documentation" that
wouldn't be very helpful.
The most complete fix would be to use `pod2texi` to generate a `pod2texi.texi`
file, and then a `pod2texi.info` file that could be installed, and change the
link to be `(pod2texi).` (linking to the Top node of the manual). However, the
experience of browsing a manpage-style document in Info style (one node per
menu) is... not convenient, and this would basically make texinfo a build-time
dependency on itself, which is kind of a mess, so maybe this isn't such a great
idea.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: bookworm/sid
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'testing-debug'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386
Kernel: Linux 5.17.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=en_AU.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_AU:en
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled
Versions of packages texinfo depends on:
ii libc6 2.33-7
ii libtext-unidecode-perl 1.30-1
ii libxml-libxml-perl 2.0207+dfsg+really+2.0134-1
ii perl 5.34.0-4
ii perl-base [perlapi-5.34.0] 5.34.0-4
ii tex-common 6.17
texinfo recommends no packages.
Versions of packages texinfo suggests:
pn texlive-base <none>
pn texlive-fonts-recommended <none>
pn texlive-latex-base <none>
pn texlive-plain-generic <none>
-- no debconf information
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