Emacs and Javascript/XSLT (was Re: A new online publishing tool for Texinfo documents.)

[Nic Ferrier <nferrier@tapsellferrier.co.uk>]

storm@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm) writes:

> Juri Linkov <juri@jurta.org> writes:
> 
> > I still think that there is no need to add Javascript and XSLT engines
> > to Emacs.  The solution you propose will be useful for web browsers
> > because they have no other extensibility mechanisms.  But Emacs could
> > handle pages received from server by using local Emacs Lisp programs.
> > The received pages could contain some indication about their type so
> > that Emacs will decide what functions to call to handle them.  And
> > this is much safer than to embed Emacs Lisp code on the web pages.
> 
> I totally agree.
> 
> Just put something like
> 
> <!-- *Info-Node* next=XX prev=XX up=XX index=XX ... -->
> 
> into every page and let emacs info reader -- or stand-alone info
> reader -- deal with that; should be damn trivial compared to XSLT or
> javascript or whatever.
> 
> But by all means, add whatever javascript and XML etc to make it
> useful in a standard browser as well.

This is not about altering the emacs info reader. This is about
writing a new HTML publishing system for Texinfo.

The arguments about adding Javascript and XSLT functionality to Emacs
are about the functionality of Emacs/W3, _not_ about Emacs info mode.

Whether the new publishing system relies on Javascript/XSLT or not is
aside from the question of whether Javascript/XSLT functionality
should be added to Emacs/W3. Clearly, Emacs/W3 is never going to be a
competitive browser without those features.


IMHO it's really not defensible to suggest that Emacs shouldn't have
access to XSLT (the question is _how_).

I can understand reservations about adding Javascript to
emacs. Unfortunately, I can't see anyway of doing it other than
linking the Javascript engine into emacs and rms has said he won't
support that.


If the new publishing system uses Javascript then Emacs/W3 won't be
able to display the pages with all the functionality.

If people here feel that a client side code system supporting emacs
lisp would be useful then I think I could probably add that to W3 and
support the 2 sets of code used for the publishing tool (Elisp and
Javascript).

Tagging might also be possible but this would require patching W3 to
support this new info publishing system. That doesn't seem the right
way round to me.


Nic