Re: terminal escapes in Info files?

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA>]

> Because it allows features such as index search that are not
> available in HTML,

Huh?  Why don't the HTML pages generated by makeinfo allow index search?
>From what I can tell they include indices just fine, exactly like
the Info format version.  It can be even better because the hyperref
to the index node can be annotated to indicate it's an index node whereas
the Info format relies on the name used in the menu to tell the
difference between an index node and a non-index node, which
makes it inadequate for non-english text.

Existing HTML browsers suck, but that doesn't mean we can't use the HTML
markup with a specially designed Info viewer (which might not even need to
understand 100% of HTML).

> and yet doesn't support colors, bold/italics, and
> other text attributes that existing text-mode terminals can display.

> For details, see this message (which started this thread):

>   http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2003-10/msg00621.html

This does not answer my question: why enhance the Info format
rather than change the readers (to use the HTML output of makeinfo
rather than the Info output) ?
I don't know about other Info browsers, but Emacs's M-x info has been
recently showing signs of bumping into limits of the Info format which
would be lifted if it used the HTML format instead.


        Stefan