Re: A Roadmap for TexInfo without Info

[Per Bothner]

On 11/26/2016 09:43 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > I in turn was responding to "The whole justification ... is to allow people
> > to use the existing browsers".  My point is there are good reasons to deprecate
> > info format more generally, including for emacs info mode.
>
> IMO, it only makes sense to deprecate the Info format if we have a
> capable replacement for it.  Otherwise, the discussion about
> deprecating it is academic, because no one will agree to throw away a
> very useful functionality without having a replacement that is
> equivalently capable.

You're being a bit inconsistent here.  You're talking about "very useful
functionality" which currently only exists in emacs info mode and the
info program - and you earlier stated emacs info is not a problem
because we can do anything we need even if we change the format.

What you appear to want is the full functionality of emacs info mode but
using a generic browser.  This is not something we have, so there is
nothing to "throw away".  It is something that would be nice to have - and
that *can* be implemented, but the full functionality will be more than
a weekend hack.

OTOH, basic keyboard-based navigation, which is useful and we don't have,
is a weekend hack - especially if we clean up the generated (x)html.

> [Searching] must work, and it must be reasonably fast.  Otherwise, looking up
> something in a manual becomes an annoyance.

As an experiment I tried:
  makeinfo --html --no-split emacs.texi -o /tmp/emacs.html

Loading file:/tmp/emacs.html (4.2MB) was close to instantaneous in Chrome, but
took about 2 seconds in Firefox.  Either was pretty zippy navigating or doing
a plain text search.  A search implemented in JavaScript might be a
different matter, though.

> > If we don't mind using a single web page for a manual (i.e. use --no-split)
> > then the search is much easier.
>
> We do mind, I think.  The Web is full of manuals split by node or by
> chapter, so they must be supported.

Huh?  We only need to support whatever we (makeinfo) generates, not
whatever the web is full of ...
--
        --Per Bothner
address@hidden   http://per.bothner.com/