Re: How to make Emacs popular again: Use monospaced fonts less

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Kévin Le Gouguec <kevin.legouguec@gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2021 09:55:29 +0200
> Cc: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>, rswgnu@gmail.com,
>  emacs-devel <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> 
> Robert Weiner <rsw@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > On Sun, Oct 11, 2020 at 1:38 AM Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> wrote:
> >
> >  Other obvious candidates for variable-pitching are basically any mode
> >  that displays data in tabular form.  And, of course, the manuals, but
> >  that'll happen by itself once we move from .info to .html.
> >
> > Is this a serious statement?  Please don't do that.  I can browse an entire 
> > Info manual easily inside Emacs nicely by pressing the spacebar and delete 
> > only.  I can
> > search entire manuals quickly and move across manuals easily.
> 
> (Jumping in without having read the whole thread; my apologies if my
> reply misses the mark)
> 
> FWIW, Emacs's web browser (M-x eww), just like most read-only modes,
> supports SPC and DEL for forward and backward page navigation.
> 
> Whatever this hypothetical move from .info to .html entails (I don't
> think we have seen patches for that yet), I expect the maintainers'
> vision is to keep feature parity with the current Info browser, with all
> its indexing and searching convenience; I don't think there should be
> cause for alarm.

I think this sub-thread is based on a misunderstanding.  I think Lars
alluded to the on-going development in the Texinfo quarters, whereby
the goal is to have HTML-based format "on steroids", which will allow
to browse GNU manuals with capable browsers without losing any
functionality we have now in the text-based Info readers.  No one
intends to lose any useful Info features; when the Texinfo developers
are done designing and implementing this, Emacs should examine the
results and see how best to support that.

People who are interested in details should go and read the archives
of bug-texinfo@gnu.org for the past year or so.