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Re: define Info's "dir"?


From: Mike Ballard
Subject: Re: define Info's "dir"?
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 05:16:48 GMT
User-agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.1

On Thu Apr 29, Eli Zaretskii disturbed my nap when he said:

> > Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help
> > From: Mike Ballard <dont_w@nt_spam.org>
> > Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 06:44:26 GMT
> > 
> > Is there a way to tell Emacs to always use a specific "dir" as the
> > top-level dir file?  Even if the name is not "dir"?
> 
> There doesn't seem to be a way to do that.  The names of DIR files are
> hardwired into info.el: Emacs looks for `dir', `DIR', `dir.info', and
> `DIR.INFO', in that order, in each Info directory.
> 
> The names are hardwired because the Texinfo package never generates
> DIR files under any other name.
> 
> Why do you need that?  What is the real problem behind your request?
> 

Thanks for the info (no pun intended).

I use gentoo.  For some (to me, inexplicable) reason the gentoo folks have
decided to have emerge (the tool for installing new sources) search for
"dir" files and in some cases rename them to dir.old.  I filed a bug on it
six months ago and it hasn't been touched.  If a bug can be classified as
"absolute lowest priority in the entire world" mine's probably it.

I happen to have my own top-level dir file, source-controlled, not in an
info dir but in the first entry in $INFOPATH so that Emacs will use it.
I've added the Info help cmds to it, formatted so that most-used are near
the top, and cleaned it up to be more 'presentable' for my tastes.

Gentoo's emerge script (IIRC) is python, which I know nothing about.  I
originally edited the script locally so it would stop being so belligerent
as to have the nerve to change things how I want them.  When I upgraded
this edit no longer seems to do the trick.

For now I have to start Emacs with a script that includes a while loop to
sleep/test/rename my "dir" whenever emerge changes it.  I was hoping to
use a new "dir" name that emerge wouldn't mess with.

Mike 
-- 

mikeballard--at--verizon.net

  "Roses are red, violets are blue,
   I'm schizophrenic and so am I"


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