#787963 (upstream) please don't use the same node name two times (wdiff)

Package:
wdiff
Source:
wdiff
Description:
Compares two files word by word
Submitter:
Bjarni Ingi Gislason
Date:
2023-09-19 22:03:02 UTC
Severity:
normal
Tags:
#787963#5
Date:
2015-03-05 22:55:57 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

   * What led up to the situation?

  Issuing command "info coreutils".

   * What was the outcome of this action?

  Output from "info coreutils" begins with chapter 2.14.

  Output from "info wdiff" begins with chapter 2.1.

  Display is normal, if the info-files have been transformed to latin-1 (8
bit single byte) encoding before they are used.

  Using "info coreutils | iconv -f utf-8 -t latin1//TRANSLIT" does only
show chapter 2.14.

  "info wdiff | iconv -f utf-8 -t latin1//TRANSLIT" does only show
chapter 2.1.
#787963#10
Date:
2015-06-06 07:24:07 UTC
From:
To:
Dear texinfo team,

down here at Debian we got a bug report concerning 5.2, but I can
confirm that the same happens with 5.9.92.

The mentioned case about coreutils is a bit particular, as there
are so many entries, but
	info wdiff
also jumps into the Invocation instead of top of wdiff.

We are updating the dir file by looping over all info files and call
	install-info "$file" "$INFODIR/dir"

I attach the gzipped version of the dir file on my system.

Additionally, it is interesting that the transformation to latin1
changes something.

All the best

Norbert

------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREINING, Norbert                               http://www.preining.info
JAIST, Japan                                 TeX Live & Debian Developer
GPG: 0x860CDC13   fp: F7D8 A928 26E3 16A1 9FA0  ACF0 6CAC A448 860C DC13
------------------------------------------------------------------------
#787963#15
Date:
2015-06-06 10:13:45 UTC
From:
To:
Please have a look at coreutils.info (or coreutils.info-1) and look
for a line starting "INFO-DIR-SECTION" followed by
"START-INFO-DIR-ENTRY", and look up until "END-INFO-DIR-ENTY". There
may be several extents of lines like this. These contain the lines
that should be copied into "dir".

Looking at the dir file you attached, there are the following entries:

* Coreutils: (coreutils).       Core GNU (file, text, shell) utilities.
* coreutils: (coreutils)coreutils invocation.   Multi-call program.

The two labels are "Coreutils" and "coreutils". Info prefers an exact
case match, so it will display "(coreutils)coreutils invocation".

Info is operating as expected here. The problem is with the Info file
- it was a bad idea to add that dir entry.
output of info into any program causes it only to output the node it
finds and any other nodes below it in the document structure. Try
"info coreutils | less" and see if you have the same thing.
#787963#25
Date:
2015-06-06 22:29:16 UTC
From:
To:
Autoconf has two dir entries the last time I checked. "info autoconf"
goes to the Top node, and "info autoconf-invocation" goes to the
program invocation node. This seems like a good solution. I don't see
that it can be fixed in the Info reader with a different matching
algorithm.
#787963#30
Date:
2015-06-06 22:25:52 UTC
From:
To:
    * coreutils: (coreutils)coreutils invocation.   Multi-call program.

I do not have a program named "coreutils" on my system, despite the
documentation, and I installed coreutils-8.23 from original sources.
Maybe coreutils.texi should not contain this Info entry?

Not that that particular case has anything to do with the general
problem, of course.  I've been bothered with such cases off and on, but
I don't think there is any general solution.  It is a fact that manuals
often have the same name as their principal utility, and thus some level
of confusion seems inevitable to me.  I can imagine other matching
algorithms, but I suspect that any change here would simply cause
trouble rather than solve it.
#787963#43
Date:
2023-09-15 11:58:50 UTC
From:
To:
Hello.

Some time ago I received (via clone & reassign), the following report from the Debian bug system:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=787963

To summarize: The command:

info wdiff

jumps into the Invocation instead of top of wdiff.

Thanks.
#787963#46
Date:
2023-09-15 11:58:50 UTC
From:
To:
Hello.

Some time ago I received (via clone & reassign), the following report from the Debian bug system:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=787963

To summarize: The command:

info wdiff

jumps into the Invocation instead of top of wdiff.

Thanks.
#787963#53
Date:
2023-09-19 00:06:35 UTC
From:
To:
Thanks for bringing this to our attention.  The primary wdiff maintainer (Martin von Gagern) has not been active on the project in some time so I'm not sure how soon the project will get to it.  We do appreciate the report regardless, though!

Denver
https://jmp.chat/
#787963#58
Date:
2023-09-19 21:32:23 UTC
From:
To:
    Thanks for bringing this to our attention.  The primary wdiff
    maintainer (Martin von Gagern) has not been active on the project in
    some time so I'm not sure how soon the project will get to it.

Denver, Martin (Martin, are you there?) - in principle, all GNU packages
should be actively maintained. If you (pl.) no longer have
time/inclination to do so, that's perfectly understandable, but please
write maintainers@gnu.org to tell them you are stepping down. Then they
can at least put up a note that the project is looking for a new
maintainer.
https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Stepping-Down.html

Since the last wdiff release was in 2014, it seems evident that this is
needed. (maintainers@gnu.org should have been contacting you about the
long time since the last release, but I guess that hasn't happened.)

Thanks,
Karl