Re: HTML-Info design

[David Kastrup]

David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:

> Nic Ferrier <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> It is a BIG job. Getting really good Info like behaviour into a browser
>> isn't trivial. It's also a thankless task (as I believe has been proved
>> on this thread).
>
> Replacing an existing solution with existing userbase with something
> that is bound to have worse performance and/or less integration with
> Emacs is going to be thankless, obviously.  The people most expected to
> profit from it are not even using preinstalled documentation yet.
>
> So any thanks will take years to arrive.  The most thanks you can expect
> from existing Info users is that it works hardly worse than before.
>
> And it will be quite a bit of work to let the current "I websearch for
> everything" target clientele lean towards changing their ways as well.
>
> So yes: this will very likely require a lot of self-motivation before
> satisfactory external appreciation is going to come in.

As another data point: quite a few people here claimed that Texinfo 5's
drop of compilation speed was a deal breaker for them.

Compilation speed.  And you are working on a replacement for an
interactive application that is supposed to tie into one's editing
workflow.  And it is supposed to tie into Emacs workflows by engaging an
Emacs-based HTML browser.

That's a long long uphill battle.  So one should very much focus on
thinking about game-changing workflow features implementable in the HTML
backend that are not accessible from Info.

-- 
David Kastrup