Info and HTML

[Ivan Shmakov]

>>>>> Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

[…]

 > Using HTML instead of Info format would be a big improvement, since
 > HTML is more flexible and can represent a wider range of contents.

 > However, unless we have an HTML-based Info reader with the same handy
 > features that the current Info reader has (for instance, the commands
 > n, p, u,

        These commands are already implemented in EWW.  They use the
        respective @rel attributes produced by Texinfo; for instance:

$ nl -ba < www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Minibuffer.html 
…
    40  <p>
    41  Next:&nbsp;<a rel="next" accesskey="n" 
href="M_002dx.html#M_002dx">M-x</a>,
    42  Previous:&nbsp;<a rel="previous" accesskey="p" 
href="Basic.html#Basic">Basic</a>,
    43  Up:&nbsp;<a rel="up" accesskey="u" href="index.html#Top">Top</a>

        (The eww-up-url command does not currently work due to a typo
        in the EWW code; see the patch MIMEd.)

 > m,

        The menu items in the Texinfo-produced HTML come with @accesskey
        attributes, which are, however, currently ignored by EWW:

    57  <ul class="menu">
    58  <li><a accesskey="1" 
href="Basic-Minibuffer.html#Basic-Minibuffer">Basic Minibuffer</a>:       Basic 
usage of the minibuffer. 
    59  <li><a accesskey="2" 
href="Minibuffer-File.html#Minibuffer-File">Minibuffer File</a>:        
Entering file names with the minibuffer. 
    60  <li><a accesskey="3" 
href="Minibuffer-Edit.html#Minibuffer-Edit">Minibuffer Edit</a>:        How to 
edit in the minibuffer. 

        Presumably, we can use one another value for the @rel attribute
        (menu-entry or nav-entry, perhaps?) to fill for that role.

 > i,

        This one is somewhat trickier.  First of all, we need a way to
        point the browser to the relevant index page(s).  The <link />
        element would fit this purpose, although again, I know of no
        @rel value currently in use for this purpose.  (At the very
        least, [1, 2] do not seem to mention anything related.)

        Then, on these index pages, we should somehow mark the index
        terms proper, for which we may again use a specific @rel value.
        (Say, rel="index-page" and rel="index-term"?)

[1] http://microformats.org/wiki/existing-rel-values
[2] http://microformats.org/wiki/Special:PrefixIndex/rel

 > SPC,

        This one is already bound to scroll-up-command, but I guess you
        mean that there should be a kind of eww-scroll-up-or-next-page
        command as well?

 > search through multiple nodes), it would also be a big step backward.

        It is certainly possible to walk over the structure pointed by
        the @rel links, but that will require the browser to retrieve
        (and cache) potentially the entire HTML manual.

        My guess is that there generally should be some kind of
        server-side search facility accompanying the manuals, for those
        having limited bandwidth.

[…]

 > To get the benefit of HTML and avoid the loss, we need

 > * A good way to represent a manual's info nodes in HTML, including
 > all their structure such that it can be extracted mechanically.
 > I suppose this is not very hard, if you know HTML better than I do,
 > and maybe it has been done already.  Has it been?

        Unless I forgot something (which is quite likely), the above
        should be it.

 > * An HTML-based Info reader (can be done in Emacs) which implements
 > these commands as well as the usual HTML browsing features.
 > (Of course, these commands won't be available to someone using an
 > ordinary browser to look at the same HTML files, but that is out of
 > our hands.)

 > You could think of this as a special-purpose browser for web pages of
 > documentation.

        Even though I’m hardly a fan of ECMAScript-based solutions, I
        guess we may employ some such solution to allow for easy access
        to the indices at the least.  The other features (or, rather,
        key bindings) are mostly there, thanks to @accesskey.

[…]

-- 
FSF associate member #7257  http://boycottsystemd.org/  … 3013 B6A0 230E 334A

--- a/lisp/net/eww.el
+++ b/lisp/net/eww.el
@@ -427,7 +427,7 @@ defun eww-handle-link (dom)
                   ("start" . :start)
                   ("home" . :home)
                   ("contents" . :contents)
-                  ("up" . up)))))
+                  ("up" . :up)))))
     (and href
         where
         (plist-put eww-data (cdr where) href))))