Re: translated manuals output file and directory name/location

> Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2026 21:48:18 +0200
> From: Patrice Dumas <[email protected]>
> 
> On Tue, Jul 21, 2026 at 02:25:47PM +0200, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> > I already answered in the other thread, if we install manuals in LL, it
> > means that we need to add the LL information in the Info file and
> > process it with install-info, and have /usr/share/info/LL added to the
> > INFOPATH, either manually by the user, or automatically based on
> > LANGUAGE or something like that.  This is possible, but requires some
> > changes to the commands, in contrast with installing all the files in
> > the same directory.  Since that kind of change is needed for dir anyway,
> > this is not such an issue, however.
> 
> Do we have a consensus on that subject?

Is having all the manuals for all the languages in the same directory
not an option?  It has the following advantages:

 . no need to modify INFOPATH or add a new environment variable
 . all the manuals in all the languages are always available, so one
   can easily read a manual for LL that is not the locale's language
 . no need to make sure LANGUAGE is set, and set correctly
 . no need to make any modifications in install-info
 . no need to make any related changes to texi2any
 . no need to modify Info readers
 . no need to adapt the various install-info targets in Makefiles

The only disadvantages I'm aware of are: (a) potentially much more
crowded Info directory, and (b) potentially much longer DIR file.
These disadvantages doesn't sound too grave to me, FWIW.

>                                        Assuming that we do, here is a
> more detailed proposal for discussion and implementation:
> 
> * we should settle on a representation of the @documentlanguage,
>   @documentscript and @documentlanguagevariant, as a LL string that can
>   be used as a subdirectory.  The main choices could be a BCP47 language
>   tag or an XPG locale.  The BCP47 language tag tend to have my
>   preference, for two reasons, one is that it is the most common way to
>   specify languages, and second it can already represent all the
>   languages, but an XPG locale would be ok too.
> * The manuals are installed in a LL subdirectory by install-info, LL being
>   based on @documentlanguage, @documentscript and
>   @documentlanguagevariant as described in the previous point.  The
>   manual information is added to the dir file in this subdirectory.
> 
>   The user could add such directories to INFOPATH manually.
> * The Info readers should also have a way to add the LL subdirectory
>   (semi-)automatically to merge the dir directory from there to search
>   for manual names and perform other computations on merged dir files.
> 
>   Adding the LL subdirectory(ies) could be done with
>    - a customization variable in the Info readers
>    - an environment variable, like INFO_LANGUAGES=LL:OO::MM_mm-Latn
>    - a way to signal that the LANGUAGE environment variable should be
>      used, for example a directory consisting only in a special character
>      in the INFOPATH, such as @ could be considered to signal to use
>      LANGUAGE, or a customization variable in the Info reader could be
>      set to trigger using LANGUAGE languages to set the list of
>      info languages (possibly converting XPG locale to BCP47 language
>      tag).
> 
> Changes to be done to texi2any:
> 
> when generating the Info file, the @documentlanguage, @documentscript
> and @documentlanguagevariant information should be made available in the
> Info file.  I propose to use the same method as the one used to convey
> that information to Info readers that output translated strings.  Given
> the previous discussion:
>   https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2026-05/msg00009.html
> this should be through variables, Info-documentlanguage,
> Info-documentscript (and Info-documentlanguagevariant for consistency).
> 
> Changes to be done to install-info:
> 
> read Info-documentlanguage, Info-documentscript and
> Info-documentlanguagevariant, generate a LL language name, install
> the manual in the LL subdirectory and put the manual in the LL/dir
> file.
> 
> Changes to be done to Info readers:
> 
> Cf point above on adding some language subdirectories automatically to
> the INFOPATH.

That's a lot of churn and changes in directory structure.  Are they
justified?