[[I|tschwinge]] started writing a plugin to render [GNU Texinfo](http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/) inside the ikiwiki environment. This plugin is not neccessarily meant to enable people to write arbitrary 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 . It's very basic at the moment, but will be improved over time. # Issues ## N-to-M Mapping of Input and Output Files Conventional ikiwiki [[*htmlize*ing|plugins/write#index6h3]] plugins have a one-to-one mapping of input file and output file: `some/where/page.mdwn` is rendered to `some/where/page.html`. This can also be achieved for Texinfo files, but is somewhat unusual there, when rendering them to HTML. In general, there is a N-to-M mapping: * N Texinfo input files (a main `.texi` file, several helper files (`fdl.texi`, `version.texi`, ...), and additional text files which are included from the main `.texi` file, e.g. `history.texi`, `libfoo.texi`, `libbar.texi`. * M Texinfo output files: the main `.texi` file (which `include`s the other input files) is usually rendered into a (flat) hierarchy of HTML files, one file per node, see the table on for an example. How to teach this to ikiwiki? --[[tschwinge]] > As far as multiple input files, you'd need to use add_depends() > to let ikiwiki know that a change to any of those files should cause a > rebuild of the "main" file. --[[Joey]] >> (?) I'll see about a frob to get `makeinfo` provide me with a list of additional files >> it used for rendering a given `.texi` file. --[[tschwinge]] > I guess you'd also have to somehow deal with > it wanting to render pages for each of the helper files. Not quite sure > 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]] > Ikiwiki is perfectly happy with a page creating other files (see eg, the > img and teximg plugins, as well as the inline plugin's rss generation). > The will_render() function supports that. > > What hasn't been done though is a page creating more than one other _page_. > Perhaps you could call IkiWiki::genpage by hand for each additional page. > You might also want to manipulate each data structure that tracks info about > pages, adding the additional pages to them, so that they're first class > pages that work as pages everywhere in ikiwiki (ie, can be inlined, > 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]] ## `makeinfo` Output `makeinfo --html` is being used for rendering. It creates stand-alone HTML files, while ikiwiki only needs the files' ``s. (?) One possibility (which is what I'm doing at the moment) is to simply cut away everythin until `` is seen and after `` has been seen. --[[tschwinge]]