Re: A less presumptive .info? (was: Re: Playground pager lsp(1))

Arsen Arsenović
2023-04-07T13:32:44Z

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Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> Gavin will tell, but AFAIU our plan is to develop js as the means
> towards the goals you mentioned. That will allow using HTML browsers
> to read Texinfo documentation without losing the functionalities of
> the Info readers we value. HTML rendering reflows as integral part of
> its workings, so that problem is not an issue if this plan succeeds.

Sure, but how will this work with the standalone and/or Emacs viewers?

In Emacs, doing so places a strain on the HTML generator to work around
eww, and presuming we choose to do that, it requires the user to have
Emacs.

In the non-Emacs case, it requires that the implementor implement at
least a subset of HTML, or places a demand on the user to have a web
browser (in which, there are two extremes: either the 'underimplemented
and insufficient' ones for which JS as glue won't work, or full browsers
which aren't accessible in many scenarios).

On the other hand, having a more advanced format based on s-exprs for
info at rest storage could let us have complete information about the
intended markup of the text to be displayed with only two syntactic
elements (lists and strings). That should be rather easy to parse.

I don't see it as very viable to replace an implementable info storage
format with only HTML for that reason.

I have TODO.HTML open on my workstation to take a look through some of
those when I get back home. I do believe that it's a high priority
target, as it is very important to newcommers to GNU who are viewing GNU
documentation from remote servers, but I doubt it can replace a native
Info format.
--
Arsen Arsenović

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