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: HTML-Info design Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 17:52:42 +0200 Message-ID: <83y4pzptpx.fsf@gnu.org> References: <87388bnzha.fsf@newcastle.ac.uk> <87k31mdbhe.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87tx0qiv45.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <87h9wqd3i5.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87h9wqimf0.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <87y4q1fekv.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <87fvc858c6.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87ioh4nf8k.fsf@ferrier.me.uk> Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1419263608 8607 80.91.229.3 (22 Dec 2014 15:53:28 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 15:53:28 +0000 (UTC) Cc: stephen@xemacs.org, rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Nic Ferrier Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Dec 22 16:53:22 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 1Y35IO-0004kq-B4 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 22 Dec 2014 16:53:20 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:41033 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Y35IN-0005iy-NL for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 22 Dec 2014 10:53:19 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:40323) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Y35I7-0005is-CQ for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 22 Dec 2014 10:53:08 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Y35I2-0006Y3-0f for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 22 Dec 2014 10:53:03 -0500 Original-Received: from mtaout22.012.net.il ([80.179.55.172]:37821) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Y35I1-0006Xw-O1; Mon, 22 Dec 2014 10:52:57 -0500 Original-Received: from conversion-daemon.a-mtaout22.012.net.il by a-mtaout22.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) id <0NGZ00D00QOTCS00@a-mtaout22.012.net.il>; Mon, 22 Dec 2014 17:52:55 +0200 (IST) Original-Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 ([87.69.4.28]) by a-mtaout22.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) with ESMTPA id <0NGZ00DT7QS78T10@a-mtaout22.012.net.il>; Mon, 22 Dec 2014 17:52:55 +0200 (IST) In-reply-to: <87ioh4nf8k.fsf@ferrier.me.uk> X-012-Sender: halo1@inter.net.il X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Solaris 10 X-Received-From: 80.179.55.172 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:180507 Archived-At: > From: Nic Ferrier > Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 10:36:11 +0000 > Cc: rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org > > > Yes. There are several browser+Javascript-based presentation packages > > (for example, S5) that do exactly that. It's easy to do with simple > > HTML and a tiny bit of CSS, and only a few lines of Javascript per > > "primitive" navigation function (eg, "next" and "last"). Whether you > > could get acceptable appearance and performance, and how much effort > > that would take, I don't know. I would guess it's not that hard. > > This is what my app does: > > http://gnudoc.ferrier.me.uk > > it implements indexing (press i) and toc and all of that. Thanks. Please allow me some comments: . The initial display of the top-level menu is annoyingly slow. For a few seconds there I thought it didn't work, then suddenly the menu appeared in its entirety. . There's no help, at least AFAICS. Neither h nor ? display anything. The only instructions I found are in the README on the Github page. . With IE 11, typing i opens the "minibuffer" area, but doesn't show the "Index topic" prompt. (Same behavior with the menu prompt.) Firefox does show the prompt, but there's no colon ":" and no space between the prompt and the cursor -- not sure if this is a display problem or a JS problem. . Typing i or m in my locale puts the cursor at the right edge of the window (both in Firefox v34.0 and IE 11.0.9600 on Windows 7). Please force the browser to use the left-to-right base paragraph direction, independent of the locale (that's what Emacs does with minibuffer prompts and input). . Looks like index entries are matched exactly (except for the letter-case), as opposed to substring matches in Info. E.g., "i display RET" takes me to http://gnudoc.ferrier.me.uk/undefined. Consequently, the "," key in Info has no equivalent. This makes index searches much less efficient than they are in Info. . Typing m followed by something exhibits unexpected completion behavior: TAB has no effect, whereas typing enough of the menu item to make it unambiguous automatically completes. Is this the intended behavior? If so, why the difference from completion implemented for the i command? . Repeated i and m keypresses start with the last value I typed, which is not useful, and requires to always delete that. . A question: does i work in a manual with more than 1 index node, like the Emacs User manual (which has 5 index nodes)? . Navigation keys (n, p, u, l) are not implemented, or don't work. Likewise with s (regular expression search through the entire manual). . Links to footnotes don't work. E.g., clicking on "1" on the 15th line in "Using 'interactive'" (http://gnudoc.ferrier.me.uk/info/Using-Interactive.html#Using-Interactive) takes me to the top-level menu instead, although the footnote is shown at the bottom of the "Using 'interactive'" section. . Info mode currently has a lot of useful features besides basic navigation, index-search, and cross-reference following, like "virtual index", info-apropos, etc. These will have to be implemented or migrated to this kind of solution. . Summary: OK as a POC, but IMO more work is needed to make sure a functional equivalent of the Info reader is indeed feasible and practical with this technology. Once again, thanks for working on this.