GNU Texinfo 5.0 Released

Four years after the last release, version 5.0 of Texinfo, the GNU documentation language, has been released. The primary highlight is a new implementation of makeinfo info in Perl rather than C. Although slower, the new version offers several advantages: cleaner code using a structured representation of the input document, Unicode support, and saner support for multiple output backends. There are over a dozen other improvements including better formatting of URLs, improved cross-manual references, and a program to convert Perl POD documentation to Texinfo.

Re: Yes, spin it that way, why don't you.

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, are full of it.

Automake does not depend on perl.

$ head -n1 /usr/bin/automake-1.11
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

Perl is not a hard dependency in "the base system" since this concept doesn't exist in "gnu/linux".

Sure it does, it means the core, non-optional components of the OS.

oxymoron

[csumpi]

...perl...cleaner code...

Re:Do not want

[sombragris]

Try pinfo [sourceforge.net]. From the description:

Pinfo is an info file viewer. It was created when the author, Przemek Borys, was very depressed trying to read gtk info entries using the standard tools.

Pinfo is similar in use to lynx. It has similar key movements, and gives similar intuition. You just move across info nodes, and select links, follow them... Well, you know how it is when you view html with lynx. :) It supports as many colors as it could.

Believe me, it's a lifesaver for reading info pages.

Re:Do not want

[ais523]

info shows the manpage by default if the info documentation isn't installed. So what you're seeing is probably a packaging problem, where the documentation exists but, for whatever reason (perhaps you're using a Debian-based distro and forgot to explicitly ask for it), wasn't installed on your computer.

Re:Oblig oblig XKCD

[LizardKing]

Whenever I install Debian or a derivative of it, I always find it includes Guile, but that no packages depend on it. The only reason it exists is because RMS didn't like Tcl, which was the up and coming glue language at the time. Despite its shortcomings, Tcl was a very nice language to extend, whereas Guile was (and probably still is) an incomplete dialect of Scheme that only satisfies the Lisp obsessives.