From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: On being web-friendly and why info must die Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 10:20:54 +0200 Message-ID: <83k325195l.fsf@gnu.org> References: <20141205123549.GA29331@thyrsus.com> <2815659.zRQ0WWWeRr@descartes> <20141205175810.GD3120@thyrsus.com> <87lhmlncb1.fsf@earlgrey.lan> <20141205193643.GB5067@thyrsus.com> <87tx19rd1b.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <20141205215138.GF7784@thyrsus.com> <54823617.4000406@cs.ucla.edu> Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1417854065 9050 80.91.229.3 (6 Dec 2014 08:21:05 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2014 08:21:05 +0000 (UTC) Cc: esr@thyrsus.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Paul Eggert Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Dec 06 09:20:56 2014 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1XxAbn-0004tE-Od for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 06 Dec 2014 09:20:55 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:53736 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XxAbn-0001L6-7d for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 06 Dec 2014 03:20:55 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:44314) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XxAbf-0001Kn-GQ for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 06 Dec 2014 03:20:52 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XxAbW-0005hb-LF for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 06 Dec 2014 03:20:47 -0500 Original-Received: from mtaout27.012.net.il ([80.179.55.183]:44893) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XxAbW-0005hQ-7X for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 06 Dec 2014 03:20:38 -0500 Original-Received: from conversion-daemon.mtaout27.012.net.il by mtaout27.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) id <0NG500B00ISAXH00@mtaout27.012.net.il> for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 06 Dec 2014 10:16:20 +0200 (IST) Original-Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 ([87.69.4.28]) by mtaout27.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) with ESMTPA id <0NG50014XIZ8AY90@mtaout27.012.net.il>; Sat, 06 Dec 2014 10:16:20 +0200 (IST) In-reply-to: <54823617.4000406@cs.ucla.edu> X-012-Sender: halo1@inter.net.il X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 80.179.55.183 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:179109 Archived-At: > Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 14:47:51 -0800 > From: Paul Eggert > Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org > > On 12/05/2014 01:51 PM, Eric S. Raymond wrote: > >> So if we don't have better alternatives, why not stick with what we > >> >have? > > Because it's ugly, heavyweight, and a barrier to entry. > > Although I know Texinfo well and asciidoc poorly and so am naturally > biased in favor of Texinfo, I can certainly attest to Texinfo being > heavyweight and having significant problems. My 3-year-old desktop at > work currently takes over a minute to create info/elisp.info from > Emacs's Texinfo sources, and this is so annoyingly slow that it > discourages me from checking my work when I edit the Elisp manual. > > I know some Emacs developers purposely run older versions of Texinfo > (which are faster) because of this performance problem, and this means > we can't assume reasonably modern Texinfo features, e.g., good support > for Unicode characters. Since I'm one of those mentioned in the last paragraph, let me tell you: this is a relatively minor problem for me. I use an older makeinfo mainly in protest: I couldn't believe the Texinfo users will accept a new version that is uniformly 18 times slower than the previous one. Especially having gone through the outcry of Emacs users when the new bidi display engine in Emacs 24 showed much smaller (but still significant) slowdown in just some very corner use cases. But if there is some language feature supported by a future Texinfo that is a must, I will definitely switch to it, and suffer the slowdown. > Even though Texinfo made a lot of sense for many years and we should not > switch lightly, it may now be time to think of switching. It'd be a win > if we could use a format with a decently-fast support. The only reason why the Texinfo maintainer accepted the current slow implementation is that no one was prepared to continue developing the old C implementation, and so the only suggestion on the table was to either accept the one based on Perl, which promised a future and a lot of extensibility, or stagnate. Therefore, an alternative to switching away from Texinfo would be to volunteer to implement a much faster translator while keeping the extensibility. Texinfo is a small and a simple enough a language for such a fast translator to be possible. If someone with motivation and enough interest is reading this, here is your cue. And once again, no matter to which source language we switch, it will not magically solve our documentation issues. Contrary to what Eric is saying, 90% of the effort of writing good documentation is not producing markup -- each one is just a couple of keys in Emacs's texinfo-mode. No, the main part of the effort is thinking how to describe a feature in a logical and didactically correct manner, and then expressing that in clear and concise English text. No markup language will ever help us solve these problems, as they are fundamentally human activities based on human creativity. They need human skills, not automated tools.