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

[chad]

> On 14 Dec 2014, at 06:25, Stephen J. Turnbull <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> Richard Stallman writes:
> 
>> Can we define a new type of URL to refer to a locally-installed
>> HTML-Info manual?
> 
> URLs are already sufficiently flexible.  You can run a dedicated HTTP
> server for http: schemes or use a file: URL for local files.  To
> reference sub-file objects you use the #fragment notation.
> 
> You'd only need a different scheme if you want URNs for info manuals
> such that Emacs could check for one installed locally and then go out
> to some canonical location on the web if not found.

Further, that is only interesting if you dont control the browser.
Specifically, a browser in emacs could look for http URLs with a
canonical form like ^http://www.gnu.org/manual/ and prefer locally
installed manuals instead. This means that someone using, say,
Firefox or MSIE to follow a manual link would use the remote manuals
(without specific local steps), but that seems ok, and doesnt require
the user to run local servers.

It might be that we decide we want something different eventually,
but this is something that can be written and used very quickly,
unlike getting a new URI.

~Chad