From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Stefan Monnier Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: On being web-friendly and why info must die Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 13:12:01 -0500 Message-ID: References: <20141205123549.GA29331@thyrsus.com> <87r3wem9g5.fsf@violet.siamics.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1417803161 5865 80.91.229.3 (5 Dec 2014 18:12:41 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2014 18:12:41 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Dec 05 19:12:34 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 1XwxMn-0001gq-Uw for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 05 Dec 2014 19:12:34 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:51804 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XwxMn-0000bc-Ac for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 05 Dec 2014 13:12:33 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:49989) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XwxMQ-0000bE-Gw for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 05 Dec 2014 13:12:19 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XwxMJ-0007h0-1c for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 05 Dec 2014 13:12:10 -0500 Original-Received: from ironport2-out.teksavvy.com ([206.248.154.181]:31208) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XwxMI-0007gW-Nq for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 05 Dec 2014 13:12:02 -0500 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AjsPAOwQflRMCqTq/2dsb2JhbABbgweDYIVaxR0EAgKBJBcBAQEBAQF8hAMBAQMBVhwMCws0EhQYDYhuCdZZAQsgkBdfFoQyBYsBpC6BeIQZIYE0gUMBAQE X-IPAS-Result: AjsPAOwQflRMCqTq/2dsb2JhbABbgweDYIVaxR0EAgKBJBcBAQEBAQF8hAMBAQMBVhwMCws0EhQYDYhuCdZZAQsgkBdfFoQyBYsBpC6BeIQZIYE0gUMBAQE X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="5.07,502,1413259200"; d="scan'208";a="99656019" Original-Received: from 76-10-164-234.dsl.teksavvy.com (HELO pastel.home) ([76.10.164.234]) by ironport2-out.teksavvy.com with ESMTP/TLS/DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA; 05 Dec 2014 13:12:02 -0500 Original-Received: by pastel.home (Postfix, from userid 20848) id CD53287F8; Fri, 5 Dec 2014 13:12:01 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <87r3wem9g5.fsf@violet.siamics.net> (Ivan Shmakov's message of "Fri, 05 Dec 2014 14:56:42 +0000") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.0.50 (gnu/linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 206.248.154.181 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:178971 Archived-At: > Also, the above made me curious of what exact features of the > HTML presentation are felt missing in Info? (In relation to GNU > documentation, anyway.) The main issue with the Info format is that it's not designed to be parsed. Even the tiny bit of parsing that's expected (i.e. find menu entries and hyperlinks) is not very well designed (e.g. restrictions on the kind of characters that appear in a menu entry). So we can present it "as is" in plain-text as was done back in Emacs-19, but it's difficult to prettify the various elements in a reliable way. We do try to do it (e.g. hide some of the verbosity of the hyperlink's syntax, use different fonts for different elements), but this is inevitably very limited because it's all done heuristically: e.g. the Info format does not tell us which part of the text is "text" and which part of the text is "quoted code", so we can't refill (which would sometimes be needed after hiding the hyperlink syntax) and we can't use proportional fonts for the text part since that would mess up the code example parts. Stefan