+[[!template id=plugin name=texinfo author="[[tschwinge]]"]]
+
[[I|tschwinge]] started writing a plugin to render
[GNU Texinfo](http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/)
inside the ikiwiki environment.
wiki pages in the Texinfo format (even though that is possible, of course),
but rather to ease collaboration on existing Texinfo documents.
-The plugin is available at <http://www.schwinge.homeip.net/~thomas/tmp/texinfo.pm>.
+The plugin is available at <http://schwinge.homeip.net/~thomas/tmp/texinfo.pm>.
It's very basic at the moment, but will be improved over time.
> what the best way would be to avoid that. --[[Joey]]
>> Might it be an option to simply not render the pages that are already
->> being used as an `include` file for another `.texi` file? --[[tschwinge]]
+>> being used as an `include` file for another `.texi` file?
+>> But how to assemble that list before actually having rendered all `.texi` files?
+>> One possibility might be to already render them at ikiwiki's *scanning* stage and
+>> store the rendered HTML files into temporary directories, and then at ikiwiki's
+>> *rendering* stage simply install the desired ones into the main tree and discard
+>> the others. --[[tschwinge]]
* M Texinfo output files: the main `.texi` file (which `include`s
the other input files) is usually rendered into a (flat) hierarchy
> appear in a site map, be linked to, etc). Not sure how to do that,
> and perhaps you could get away without doing it actually. --[[Joey]]
+>> Currently I use `makeinfo --no-split` and render to stdout, so that I can
+>> easily capture the output and stuff it into the appropriate ikiwiki data structure.
+>> If we want to have multiple output files (which we'll eventually want to have,
+>> to avoid having such large single-file outputs), we won't be able to
+>> do this anymore.
+>> (?) Then we'll need a way to find the main output file, which
+>> will be the one to be copied into what ikiwiki expects to be the main output
+>> of the rendered `.texi` file.
+>> Perhaps (again) parse the `.texi` file for a `@setfilename` statement?
+>> The other generated files will also have to
+>> copied somewhere (preferably into a subdirectory named alike the main file
+>> to avoid name space collisions; but need to take care of links between the files then)
+>> and need to be registed within the ikiwiki system.
+>> --[[tschwinge]]
+
+There needs to be some logic to establish a mapping between the *N* input files
+and the *M* output files.
+(At least for web-editing via CGI this is needed: ikiwiki (currently) needs to be able
+to deduce *one* input file from a given output file)
+Easiest would be either to have *N = 1*
+(plus perhaps some input files that are not meant to be editable, like `gpl.texi`)
+or to have
+*M = N* and have a (?) one-to-one mapping between *input file n* and *output file m*
+(which is not possible in Texinfo's `makeinfo` at the moment).
+--[[tschwinge]]
+
## `makeinfo` Output
(?) One possibility (which is what I'm doing at the moment) is to simply cut away
everythin until `<body>` is seen and after `</body>` has been seen. --[[tschwinge]]
+
+
+# Bugs
+
+## Non-functional Texinfo Commands
+
+Those commands are know to not work currently:
+
+* `@printindex`
+* `@shortcontents`
+* `@contents`
+
+This is due to `makeinfo` not providing this functionality if rendering to stdout.