Re: info info; man info (documentation about info)

[Gavin Smith]

On Sat, Jan 07, 2023 at 11:45:32PM +0100, Arsen Arsenović wrote:
> >>  That said, that could be
> >> done, if others agree, but I believe a better experience can be created
> >> by making the info format viewers themselves more accessible for people
> >> more used to pagers, or otherwise un-adapted to EMACS.
> >
> > :)
> >
> > If you could add an alternative mode where it would behave somewhat like
> > less(1)/vim(1), that would be great.
> 
> That's there!  ``info --vi-keys''

Not exactly as it still shows only one node at once, and when you get
to the end of a node there is blank screen at the bottom.

I wrote the following in Texinfo TODO's file (years ago) and later added
the note saying it wouldn't be done:

  A running view mode in Info, to display the next node after the end of the
  last one, and be able to toggle display of a node's subnodes.  
  [Too hard to implement because of how much code assumes 
   that only one node is in a window at once.]

That seems to be a move in the "behave like less(1)" direction, but
would require someone to implement it, which may require extensive changes
throughout the Info program.  The info source code is not that easy
to work with in the first place.

> >> A suggestion I got already (and I'll see if I can implement it soon) is
> >> generating a HTML version of the ``(dir)'' node, and probably providing
> >> a link to it, or a shortcut to jump from info to a HTML view, or
> >> something like that, so that an end user can make use of the HTML view,
> >> which is potentially more alike what they'd be adjusted to.
> >
> > HTML is probably good for some.  However, others prefer the terminal (yes,
> > there are terminal HTML browsers, but for some reason I don't find them very
> > useful).
> 
> Heh, yes, I'd not certainly not want to get rid of the terminal
> accessibility - hell, I rely on it a lot ;) - but HTML seems less
> integrated than Info can get, and it might be preferred by a lot of
> folk, hence, it would be nice to have it up to par.

Please see the TODO.HTML file in the Texinfo repository for past discussion
and pointers for future work:

  This file discusses issues related to HTML being used alongside or
  instead of Info as a documentation format.  As this has been discussed
  for many years without much progress being made, it was thought helpful
  to create a file like this to collect all the issues in one place.  Then,
  we could avoid having the same discussions over and over again.  Anybody
  raising the question could be referred to this file so they could be
  aware of the current situation.