On 2012-12-29, James Cloos <cloos at jhcloos.com> wrote:
> I now have my dist use xz(1) to compress compresible files, including
> man and info pages. The breaks maxima's describe functionality.
> Both emacs and info(1) are happy with the xz(1)ed info files.
> I looked through the code, but I couldn't determine how describe opened
> the bzip2(1)ed (and presumably gzip(1)ed) info pages, so I couldn't write
> a patch to add xz(1).
Unless someone changed something while I wasn't looking (entirely
possible, really), I don't think Maxima can read any kind of compressed
info file, only plain text.
In order to make it happen, one would need to bring in a Common Lisp
library for compressed streams. I guess it's feasible, but it seems like
nontrivial work to get a minor reduction in the amount of disk storage
required -- something which is considered very cheap these days.
best,
Robert Dodier