Re: A new online publishing tool for Texinfo documents.

From: karl@freefriends.org (Karl Berry)
Cc: epameinondas@gmx.de
Subject: Re: A new online publishing tool for Texinfo documents.
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 09:10:22 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <200311241410.hAOEAMN11471@f7.net> (raw)

    It's better not to split a XML file, because splitting it to many files
    will complicate the processing of XML structure as a whole.

I agree, and I see no gain to splitting the XML since it is an
intermediate format in this scenario.  But we're not writing the code,
so it's not up to us :).

    But for such browsers HTML files is already good enough solution.

No, it isn't.  That is the whole point of the Bob/Nic proposal.  It does
not support search/index-search, which is a crucial feature.

    1. continue to hack existing info.el to overcome existing limitations
       of Info format;

I strongly, strongly believe that current Info format should continue to
be a text/console based format, essentially as it is now, trying to
describe only what can be done on character-based displays.  I.e., as we
battered to death earlier, we might add color support, which is about
the only thing (I can think of) that consoles can do that Info can't now.

As I said, I see no point in trying to make Info format into some ersatz
HTML or XML with "logical" markup, trying to somehow allow reformatting
paragraphs and all the other things HTML does.  That way lies madness.

For using the Info system with bitmapped displays, using HTML/XML, such
as Bob and Nic are proposing, seems to me to be a far superior approach.
HTML/XML will be much better at that than the Info format ever could be.
And we lose the simplicity and usefulness of current Info format if we
try to make it into XML.

    2. extend existing Web browser implemented in Emacs for better support
       of Info HTML navigation;

That is what Bob/Nic are proposing.

    3. try to use an additional XML format in Emacs;

Again, that is what Bob/Nic are proposing -- essentially.  I suppose one
could parse the XML output from Texinfo directly, but I don't think that
has any special benefits in this case.  (Although GTK does it.)  It
seems better to make it work with web browsers, since most everyone has
a browser installed already.
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