Re: Bug tracker for skribilo

[indieterminacy]

Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

> Hi!
>
> Arun Isaac <arunisaac@systemreboot.net> skribis:
>> Another idea that I didn't mention in the talk, is that we should use
>> Skribilo for the Guix manual! :-) It would be good for both Skribilo and
>> Guix. The kind of gymnastics (preprocessing, postprocessing and what
>> not) we currently have to do with texinfo is amazingly bad. "Documents
>> as software" is a powerful idea, and currently the skribilo manual
>> doesn't really do it justice. Imagine how much more consistent and
>> comprehensive the Guix manual could be if parts of it were
>> autogenerated. I'm all for developing skribilo into a full-fledged
>> texinfo replacement! :-)
>
> Yes… it’s complicated.  So far, I’d be tempting to keep Texinfo source
> for the Guix manual, notably because ‘makeinfo’ is more robust overall:
> the Info and PDF output we get is an order of magnitude better than what
> Skribilo currently gives.  But Skribilo can be improved, of course.
>
> What I’d like to have is a Texinfo reader in Skribilo: Guile already
> comes with a Texinfo -> stexi (similar to SXML) parser, so the reader in
> Skribilo would be quite small.  The parser in Guile proper needs love
> though: it’s good but not good enough to handle complete real-life
> manuals, I think.
>
> Longer-term, we could also look at the Scribble syntax: unlike
> Skribe/Skribilo, it’s text-first.  What if Texinfo became our own
> Scribble-like syntax?  We’d extend Texinfo syntax with escapes that
> would let us use custom markup or introduce Scheme code in documents.
>

Should you be looking into aligning syntaxes for these keep me in the
loop.

I have additional experience with Latex, Context, (sadly not Texinfo
yet), Orgmode; and Koutliner. I should have some useful suggestions once
commonality becomes more apparant.

It is worth stating that TXR melds wonderfully with the GemText format.

>From my Fosdem talk, here is a simple example of a GemText file with TXR
parsing rules inside it.

Compilation of GemText content featuring TXR content inside TXR parser.
$ txr rq_the-trouble-with-glichen.gmi

Diffing against the output will give you ideas regarding its potential
(TXR is a mature Lisp in its own respect).

I shall be exploiting this unique symbiosis in 2022, including with
tethering to the Koutliner block format.

Given the gains from Arun's GemText reader, it may be that formal rules
in TXR's orbit can be used to guide content to be more accessible Skribilo.


Jonathan

> Food for thought!
>
> Ludo’.