From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Miles Bader Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.xemacs.design,gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: INFO on add-ons Date: 05 Sep 2002 10:48:57 +0900 Sender: xemacs-design-admin@xemacs.org Message-ID: References: <3D728E82.8000808@cox.net> <87ptvxxkoj.fsf@tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87fzwtxad9.fsf@tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <3D73F6D1.7010002@cox.net> <874rd7wuos.fsf@tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <3D74D797.7000707@cox.net> <87bs7etocv.fsf@tleepslib.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <200209041549.g84FnQp19483@rum.cs.yale.edu> <1031163761.2470.183.camel@bobcat.ods.org> Reply-To: Miles Bader NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1031190574 14699 127.0.0.1 (5 Sep 2002 01:49:34 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 01:49:34 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Stefan Monnier , "Stephen J. Turnbull" , bob@rattlesnake.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org, xemacs-design@xemacs.org Return-path: Original-Received: from gwyn.tux.org ([207.96.1.200]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 17mllz-0003og-00 for ; Thu, 05 Sep 2002 03:49:31 +0200 Original-Received: from gwyn.tux.org (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by gwyn.tux.org (8.9.3/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAA18806; Wed, 4 Sep 2002 21:51:02 -0400 Original-Received: (from turnbull@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.9.3/8.9.1) id VAA18762 for xemacs-design-mailman@xemacs.org; Wed, 4 Sep 2002 21:50:13 -0400 Original-Received: (from mail@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.9.3/8.9.1) id VAA18757 for turnbull@tux.org; Wed, 4 Sep 2002 21:50:13 -0400 Original-Received: from TYO201.gate.nec.co.jp (TYO201.gate.nec.co.jp [202.32.8.214]) by gwyn.tux.org (8.9.3/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAA18739; Wed, 4 Sep 2002 21:50:06 -0400 Original-Received: from mailgate4.nec.co.jp ([10.7.69.193]) by TYO201.gate.nec.co.jp (8.11.6/3.7W01080315) with ESMTP id g851nfE11851; Thu, 5 Sep 2002 10:49:42 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: from mailsv.nec.co.jp (mailgate51.nec.co.jp [10.7.69.190]) by mailgate4.nec.co.jp (8.11.6/3.7W-MAILGATE-NEC) with ESMTP id g851n8I00385; Thu, 5 Sep 2002 10:49:40 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: from mcsss2.ucom.lsi.nec.co.jp ([10.30.114.133]) by mailsv.nec.co.jp (8.11.6/3.7W-MAILSV-NEC) with ESMTP id g851n6e14529; Thu, 5 Sep 2002 10:49:07 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: from mcspd15.ucom.lsi.nec.co.jp (mcspd15 [10.30.114.174]) by mcsss2.ucom.lsi.nec.co.jp (8.10.2+Sun/3.7Wlsi_mx_6.0) with ESMTP id g851mws25948; Thu, 5 Sep 2002 10:48:58 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: by mcspd15.ucom.lsi.nec.co.jp (Postfix, from userid 31295) id A937B36F4; Thu, 5 Sep 2002 10:48:57 +0900 (JST) Original-To: Ville =?iso-8859-1?q?Skytt=E4?= System-Type: i686-pc-linux-gnu Blat: Foop In-Reply-To: <1031163761.2470.183.camel@bobcat.ods.org> Original-Lines: 62 X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by gwyn.tux.org id VAA18739 X-XEmacs-List: design Errors-To: xemacs-design-admin@xemacs.org X-BeenThere: xemacs-design@xemacs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.1 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Discussion of design and features for XEmacs. List-Unsubscribe: , X-MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to quoted-printable by gwyn.tux.org id VAA18806 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.xemacs.design:1396 gmane.emacs.devel:7491 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:7491 Ville Skytt=E4 writes: > > > (Obviously the retargetable backend is a _huge_ improvement, and I > > > wouldn't go back, although I'd like to go forward from Texinfo to > > > XMLinfo.) >=20 > Yeah! Thumbs up here. I think it depends on what's meant by `go forward'. XML makes a decent intermediate format, but it's a pretty poor source format. If we had tools to do XML->info, XML->tex, etc., and a tools that did texinfo->XML, then we could support both formats, and leave it up to the original author of a document which he preferred to use. This would end up making people unhappy I suppose (I'd be annoyed to edit XML docs, and XML-structure-editor-users would be annoyed to work on texinfo), but it might result in more documentation. > > What's so great about compared to @kindex C-x= k ? > > What's so great about foobar compared to @sample{foo= bar} ? >=20 > The user base. What do you think is the percentage of the technically > oriented people, especially "newcomers", that feel more comfortable wit= h > the former? Why should a "newcomer" who has a choice learn Texinfo if > she already knows XML? I'd guess that the `user base' of XML falls into two camps: (1) Those who are afraid of any markup language, and would insist on using a structure editor or something. These people don't `know XML'. (2) People who actually know XML. These people will pick up texinfo's syntax in about 35 seconds (both syntaxes are really almost trivial). It's group (1) that's really relevant to your argument, but my impression is that almost all free-software documentation currently comes from group (2). The question is whether making things easier for group (1) would improve the documentation situation significantly (it has to be `significantly' of course, because otherwise it's not worth the effort). I don't the answer to this. > > XML has its advantages, but for a *source* format, it's just way too > > cumbersome/verbose, unless you use an editor that hides the markup, > > but then what would such an editor look like ? [ like texinfo (`@tag{...}'), of course :-) ] > If there's a way to use both XML and Texinfo and make them > coexist happily, I'm all for it. Indeed... -Miles --=20 We live, as we dream -- alone....