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

[David Kastrup]

Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:

>>> Until there is a documentation viewer available in Elisp that is almost
>>> as good as Info-mode while being prettier,
>> Does a web browser not qualify?
>
> Notice the "in Elisp" and "prettier".  So far I don't know of any such
> thing, web browser or not.

"prettier" for an Info mode replacement it to be taken with a huuuge
grain of salt.  Emacs is an editor, its fonts, foreground, background
are (hopefully) configured for maximum readability.  When jumping back
and forth between work area and documentation, "pretty" takes a hefty
backseat towards readability.  The normal web page appearance, in
contrast, has somewhat different main targets.

So it may well be that a generic browser alone, written in Elisp or not,
does not yet meet the usability offered by Info mode.  Basically what
would be nice is an Info browser that just pulls the same information
from HTML that it pulls from Info files these days but does not
significantly differ except in file format.  And preferably not taking
noticeably longer for parsing and display.  And supporting things like
full-document search for which it needs to have an idea about how to get
the full document.  And, of course, not needing the source on disk.  If
one can just transparently run an Info-like browser on the online
documentation of software, this is a nice boon even though it comes with
the problem of version mismatch between installed software and online
documentation.

-- 
David Kastrup