Fedora

HTML preferred over INFO

GNU packages have documentation provided as texinfo files. These can be translated into (the most popular ones) info, html (in single-page or multi-page format), pdf or plain text. Currently only info documents are generated.

There was a suggestion users nowadays prefer more for example html than the info documents (an idea of Jan Pazdziora).

Proposal

While info documents should remain available proposing to also generate single-page html format. As info is normally stored compressed (.info.gz, 411KB) it is much smaller than .html (2280KB).

Therefore proposing to move both the info and html documentation into separate -doc subpackages. Man pages are generally available still in the main packages for the basic information.

Example

Package gdb-7.2.50.20110213-22.fc15 is now using the proposed format.

Implementation

%package doc
Summary: Documentation for ###package-Summary###
Group: Documentation
BuildArch: noarch

%description doc
###brief package description###

This package provides INFO and HTML user manual for ###package###.

%files doc
%doc ###path-in-build-dir###/###manual1###.html
%doc ###path-in-build-dir###/###manual2###.html
%defattr(-,root,root)
%{_infodir}/###manual1###.info*
%{_infodir}/###manual2###.info*