Re: On being web-friendly and why info must die

[David Kastrup]

address@hidden (Phillip Lord) writes:

> David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> address@hidden (Phillip Lord) writes:
>>
>>> David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:
>>>
>>>> Again: Texinfo is not a relevant hurdle.  Elisp is.
>>>>
>>>> Org most certainly would be a larger hurdle for me.
>>>
>>> Well, lots of people here are saying that texinfo is a problem, even
>>> if it is not for you.
>>
>> As long as I don't see those "lots of people" offering to contribute
>> non-marked up manual sections either, it is irrelevant whether they are
>> saying texinfo is a problem for them.
>
>
> At the risk of repeating a point that has been made before, yes, of
> course it is the case that for the majority of people who are actively
> using texinfo to produce documentation for Emacs, texinfo is not a
> problem.
>
> The incremental approach, however, of first enabling the use of org so
> that some of the documentation could be written using it and then
> transforming this to texinfo (to work with the rest of the tool chain)
> would be interesting. It would, for example, allow you to see whether
> org would be a problem for you in a real environment.

The main reason brought forward for abandoning Texinfo appears that it
has become slower.  So we convert instead to a system that is even
slower in order to indirectly produce Texinfo which we will then
_additionally_ convert to Info?

> If it works, then the eventual aim could be to throw out texinfo and
> replace it with org by simple virtual of writing a org->info exported
> (direct rather than through texinfo).

Would still be slower than now, correct?

> Or removing info and using org->eww usable HTML for in Emacs
> browsing.

Except that eww is a very basic browser, and not even the non-basic
browsers for HTML are even remotely comparable in performance and
usability to Emacs' Info browser.  And the HTML format cannot support
full-document search from a single-page display on principle.

> Or, supplementing org with a "kiosk" mode, and just using the org
> source directly as a viewing format.
>
> If it doesn't work, then you will have been right all along.

So far, I don't see anything that would ultimately address the perceived
problems.

> It's the reverse Yoda approach: "try or try not: there is no do".

Yes, I understood that this is all about hipsterisms.  But hip does not
get the work done or redone.

-- 
David Kastrup