Re: terminal escapes in Info files?

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2003 at 03:06:04PM -0500, Karl Berry wrote:
> But
> in any case, I definitely wouldn't bother doing this.  Instead, I'd just
> tell people to use lynx or emacs-w3 or whatever.  I've never really seen
> the point of standalone info in the first place, as I've mentioned before.
> But some people like it, so fine.

The reasons seem obvious, because the info program is optimized for browsing
info files -- it includes things like index access, full-document search
(without requiring the whole document to be on one node), etc.

Even if we suddenly switched over to using html (or something) for info, we
_shouldn't_ just use the current html backend, we should use certain
conventions to encode extra information that the html-info reader can use to
provide the various extra functions that make info so useful.  IOW, html is
the low-level formatting language used, but that doesn't mean that it's `just
html'; it might be readable by a normal web browser, but you'd lose the extra
functionality in that case.

[Of course, it could be that the quickest way to make an `html-info' program
would be to enhance an existing web browser like lynx (well except that lynx
is fairly crappy, maybe use `links' instead).]

-Miles
-- 
P.S.  All information contained in the above letter is false,
      for reasons of military security.