Re: Changes to Texinfo DTD

[Luc Teirlinck]

Does anybody have any idea where we stand now with this thread and its
various relatives?  Is the following a reasonable summary?

1. The Info format is "here to stay".  It is intended for readers with
   minimal capabilities and it is important that people can access
   documentation via these readers.

2. Emacs is not a reader with minimal capabilities.  It could use XML
   to make Emacs info look as pretty as it can be, without paying a
   price in terms of functionality.

3. Oliver Scholz has a patch to allow the standalone reader to convert
   XML to Info format "on the fly", so people would only need to have
   the XML files installed to use both Emacs Info and standalone Info.
   Oliver's patch would add some "color" to standalone Info.  (Unless
   these colors would be very customizable, or maybe even if they are,
   please provide a command line option to disable this.  Not
   everybody can read yellow on white, cyan on white or red on black.)

4. Oliver is not volunteering to rewrite info.el to be able to use XML
   himself, although he has offered help, as explained in his earlier
   message.  (I do not know XML and am not volunteering either.)
   Would there be anybody feeling comfortable with this, assuming this
   is really what we wanted to do?
 
5. Emacs will still need to be able to handle .info files, if no XML
   file is available, but certainly if we produce XML files from the
   .texi files, that case becomes marginal enough that we should not
   waste a lot of energy trying to do the impossible by attempting to
   present .info files in "nicer" ways than theoretically possible.

Sincerely,

Luc.