>> What I'm now working on are macros for `configure.ac` to find a >> UTF-8 locale, which is important for the documentation generation >> in the long run. [...] > > Phooey, that sounds complicated. I wonder if it would not take just > as much time to reimplement texindex in Perl, as suggested in > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2022-11/msg00022.html > … (It would also benefit everyone using indices in Texinfo.)
`texindex` is just one part of the problem.[*] We also need a UTF-8 locale for both `makeinfo` and `lilypond-book` – without it, the output for both PDF and HTML is simply wrong. My standard example is the incorrect display of the degree sign in the documentation of the '\rotate' markup command: https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.23/Documentation/notation/align In other words, such a test for `configure.ac` is inevitable. We might fix `lilypond-book` to emit a warning or even abort if it can't switch to a UTF-8 locale internally, but `makeinfo` (and soon `texi2any`, as a replacement for `texi2html`) is out of our control. Werner [*] Even if rewritten in Perl, we eventually need language-specific locales to get correct collation in indices. This means that for building the German documentation, `de_DE.UTF-8` should be used, etc., etc. For this, however, there are ready-to-use autoconf macros available in 'gnulib'. If there are better suggestions to avoid such additional locale tests, I'm all ears.
