Re: man pages & info prefer HTML format

[Dennis German]

OK, ya learn something every day, at least I try to.

The documentation at
https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/index.html
looks really good ! Examples and explanation.

Some extra begin/end quote (noise) and somewhat extra spacey with 
option  (multiple double spaced) on a separate line from the description.

From now on my goto reference.

Thanks for your replies.

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@arsen: thanks for the reference to 
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/texinfo.git/tree/TODO.HTML

@berny: ... man pages are available online in HTML format: 
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/

These pages are only partially in HTML format , not addressing:
#1 wrap text : They depend on <PRE> which prevents the user from 
adjusting for their required width.

#2  links: Example: You can read more about the GNU extensions to the 
DWARF standard /here/. here is not a link

#3a use BOTH color and less-than/greater-than .

#3b sometimes end up with confusing extra symbols for example in abidw:
• *--type-id-style <sequence``|``hash>

Since very many people us a "multiple window" environment having a 
resizable, "slide_aroundable" web browser window on the same display, in 
another window, as a script source or command line makes easy viewing 
and reference.

With respect to ease of writing  the basic HTML tags are rather simple 
to write and then there is the write once read many,many times 
consideration.

@Dragan Simic: I'd like to understand why you feel that
" ability to view the source as-is, with no rendering applied"
is important


++++++++++++++++++++

On 9/24/23 08:37, Dennis German wrote:
> After the  years and fine tuning of basic HTML, why aren't the man 
> pages standardized to HTML format?
>
> Perhaps some users don't frequently enough reference man pages as they 
> should and fewer use info , but (nearly) everyone uses a browser.
>
> And I don't mean programmatically simply wrapping the man page in HTML.
>
> The ability to
>
>      1) wrap text ( not truncate a line with a hyphen and place the
>    last 4 or 5 characters on the next line) and let the user decide the
>    width of the window
>
>      2) embed links (rather than "see also")
>
>      3) use basic fonts to render variables, command name, keywords,
>    description and clarify optional and alternatives (rather than the
>    noisy apostrophes, < and > which also take of space)
>
>      4) show the user much more information the first and every page
>    (rather than needing multiple lines for the simplest keyword
>    description)
>
> HTML is superior than the current format and easily customizable in 
> width, font size and colors by the reader.
>
> Thank you for your consideration,
>
> Dennis German