* A new online publishing tool for Texinfo documents. @ 2003-11-22 20:50 Nic Ferrier 2003-11-23 16:34 ` Richard Stallman 0 siblings, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread From: Nic Ferrier @ 2003-11-22 20:50 UTC (permalink / raw) Bob Chasell and I have been discussing a new way of making Texinfo available online. I am planning to build what we have discussed over December. This message has been sent to all interested parties. The aims of the new system are to make a web based info reader that would be as good as the console based Info reader and that can be used by people with slow Internet connections and free software web browsers (Mozilla, Galeon, etc... as well as Emacs/W3, Lynx, etc...) Our plan is to do this: 1 alter makeinfo --xml so that it splits the XML by Texinfo nodes. The --no-split switch will cause the existing output (or maybe add a new switch for the new XML output?) 2 write an XSLT stylesheet that transforms the chunked XML into specialized HTML; the specialized HTML will include Javascript to emulate Info navigation, index lookups, etc... 3 write a CGI script that will lookup a regular expression in the HTML files and return either a list of hits or the HTML file containing the Nth hit (N being an optional argument supplied to the CGI script) 4 write a shell script for linking all this together, and possibly to auto-magically install the produced files into an Apache webserver (other webservers to be supported as and when I have time). The shell script(4) will be dependant on a tool called xsltproc which comes with the GNOME libxsl library and is quite commonly available on free software machines. xsltproc runs on all free operating systems and also some non-free ones such as Windoze (but obviously we don't care much about those /8-) I personally don't think this will deprecate the existing HTML output from makeinfo because that has good support for ALL browsers. There is one big problem with the current plan: Emacs/W3 and Lynx do not support Javascript so we will have to find another way of binding actions to keys within the HTML pages downloaded to those browsers. Does anyone have any bright ideas about that? I am considering the potential of adding Mozilla's Javascript engine to Emacs and Lynx which would solve this problem. The licence of Mozilla's Javascript engine is compatible with the GPL. However, I think this might be rather a big job, certainly bigger than the new publishing system for online Texinfo. On the subject of Lynx, has anyone tried this version of Links? http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~clock/twibright/links/ It apparently has Javascript support and is GPLed. Nic ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread
* Re: A new online publishing tool for Texinfo documents. 2003-11-22 20:50 A new online publishing tool for Texinfo documents Nic Ferrier @ 2003-11-23 16:34 ` Richard Stallman 2003-11-23 16:56 ` Nic Ferrier 0 siblings, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread From: Richard Stallman @ 2003-11-23 16:34 UTC (permalink / raw) Cc: epameinondas, bob, karl, juri, emacs-devel The aims of the new system are to make a web based info reader that would be as good as the console based Info reader and that can be used by people with slow Internet connections and free software web browsers (Mozilla, Galeon, etc... as well as Emacs/W3, Lynx, etc...) Is this intended as a replacement for Info format, or as another format to be used alongside it? It can't do any harm as an additional format. I am considering the potential of adding Mozilla's Javascript engine to Emacs and Lynx which would solve this problem. Although the license permits adding this to Emacs, I certainly don't want to do it. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread
* Re: A new online publishing tool for Texinfo documents. 2003-11-23 16:34 ` Richard Stallman @ 2003-11-23 16:56 ` Nic Ferrier 2003-11-25 18:36 ` Kevin Rodgers 0 siblings, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread From: Nic Ferrier @ 2003-11-23 16:56 UTC (permalink / raw) Cc: epameinondas, bob, karl, juri, emacs-devel Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes: > The aims of the new system are to make a web based info reader that > would be as good as the console based Info reader and that can be > used by people with slow Internet connections and free software web > browsers (Mozilla, Galeon, etc... as well as Emacs/W3, Lynx, etc...) > > Is this intended as a replacement for Info format, or as another > format to be used alongside it? It can't do any harm as an additional > format. It's an additional format to solve the specific problem of reading documentation that you don't happen to have on your local machine. > I am considering the potential of adding Mozilla's Javascript engine > to Emacs and Lynx which would solve this problem. > > Although the license permits adding this to Emacs, I certainly > don't want to do it. That's interesting. If it isn't done then it's likely that the W3 browser will be less and less useful as more and more javascript looks a likely trend. Nic ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread
* Re: A new online publishing tool for Texinfo documents. 2003-11-23 16:56 ` Nic Ferrier @ 2003-11-25 18:36 ` Kevin Rodgers 2003-11-25 20:05 ` Nic Ferrier 2003-11-26 0:21 ` Robert J. Chassell 0 siblings, 2 replies; 13+ messages in thread From: Kevin Rodgers @ 2003-11-25 18:36 UTC (permalink / raw) Nic Ferrier wrote: > It's an additional format to solve the specific problem of reading > documentation that you don't happen to have on your local machine. Why can't ange-ftp, tramp, or http-get be used to retrieve remote Info files for local browsing within Emacs? -- Kevin Rodgers ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread
* Re: A new online publishing tool for Texinfo documents. 2003-11-25 18:36 ` Kevin Rodgers @ 2003-11-25 20:05 ` Nic Ferrier 2003-11-25 22:38 ` Kim F. Storm 2003-11-26 0:21 ` Robert J. Chassell 1 sibling, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread From: Nic Ferrier @ 2003-11-25 20:05 UTC (permalink / raw) Cc: emacs-devel Kevin Rodgers <ihs_4664@yahoo.com> writes: > Nic Ferrier wrote: > > > It's an additional format to solve the specific problem of reading > > documentation that you don't happen to have on your local machine. > > Why can't ange-ftp, tramp, or http-get be used to retrieve remote Info > files for local browsing within Emacs? Because it would take a lot of work to alter the info reader to make that happen. And users would then be tied to emacs for doing it... The current proposal offers at least as much flexibility as current Info publishing systems: - it will be available to browsers - it will therefore be available to emacs - it will also therefore be available on the console (links) Nic ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread
* Re: A new online publishing tool for Texinfo documents. 2003-11-25 20:05 ` Nic Ferrier @ 2003-11-25 22:38 ` Kim F. Storm 0 siblings, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread From: Kim F. Storm @ 2003-11-25 22:38 UTC (permalink / raw) Cc: Kevin Rodgers, emacs-devel Nic Ferrier <nferrier@tapsellferrier.co.uk> writes: > Kevin Rodgers <ihs_4664@yahoo.com> writes: > > > Nic Ferrier wrote: > > > > > It's an additional format to solve the specific problem of reading > > > documentation that you don't happen to have on your local machine. > > > > Why can't ange-ftp, tramp, or http-get be used to retrieve remote Info > > files for local browsing within Emacs? > > Because it would take a lot of work to alter the info reader to make > that happen. I doubt that it will take more work than adding XSLT and javascript support to and otherwise enhancing emacs/w3. > > And users would then be tied to emacs for doing it... What's wrong about that? This is emacs-devel which is supposed to deal with emacs development! > The current > proposal offers at least as much flexibility as current Info > publishing systems: > > - it will be available to browsers > - it will therefore be available to emacs > - it will also therefore be available on the console (links) so: - this discussion will continue outside emacs-devel, right? Thank you. ++kfs ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread
* Re: A new online publishing tool for Texinfo documents. 2003-11-25 18:36 ` Kevin Rodgers 2003-11-25 20:05 ` Nic Ferrier @ 2003-11-26 0:21 ` Robert J. Chassell 2003-11-26 6:25 ` Eli Zaretskii 2003-11-26 18:37 ` Kevin Rodgers 1 sibling, 2 replies; 13+ messages in thread From: Robert J. Chassell @ 2003-11-26 0:21 UTC (permalink / raw) Kevin Rodgers <ihs_4664@yahoo.com> asked Why can't ange-ftp, tramp, or http-get be used to retrieve remote Info files for local browsing within Emacs? Because all the processing is done on the local machine, so for some actions, like navigating via search the whole file must be downloaded. Info can have a slow connection between the display and the rendering engine, but presumes a fast connection between the rendering engine and the source of the Info document. On the other hand, a Web browser usually has a fast connection between its display and the rendering engine -- it is very hard to use a mouse with a slow connection, and commonly used Web browsers use mice -- but in most cases, a Web browser has a slow connection between the rendering engine and the source of the HTML: the bandwidth is that of a telephone dial up line. People with wider bandwidths make up a small fraction of the over all Internet population. The idea for this new tool, among other goals, is to cause the computer holding the source of the HTML to do some of the work on the document, such as search through multiple files that make up the document. This requires a CGI script. The Info system could be enhanced to do the same -- at least, I think so. Can anyone think why, if some of the work were done by the the device that provides the Info document, you could not run Info remotely over a slow connection between its rendering engine and the source of the Info document? The point with this proposal is that currently, HTML fails as a documentation source in its most common situation, which is with a dial up. The goal is to make an HTML expression of a Texinfo manual do as well as Info did back in the 1980s, at least. (Also, in commonly used Web browsers, to do index searches, to do `next', `prev', `up', and `last' movements with default keybindings rather than depend on mice, and maybe to enhance W3 mode or other Emacs mode, to be a good browser.) A different goal is to enhance Info to enable people to read documents remotely, when `remote' means `low bandwidth connection between renderer and Info doc source' rather than `low bandwidth connection between display and renderer'. I doubt this second goal is as important as the first. -- Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8 http://www.teak.cc bob@rattlesnake.com _______________________________________________ Texinfo home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/ texinfo-pretest@texinfo.org http://ff0.org/mailman/listinfo/texinfo-pretest ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread
* Re: Re: A new online publishing tool for Texinfo documents. 2003-11-26 0:21 ` Robert J. Chassell @ 2003-11-26 6:25 ` Eli Zaretskii 2003-11-26 18:37 ` Kevin Rodgers 1 sibling, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread From: Eli Zaretskii @ 2003-11-26 6:25 UTC (permalink / raw) Cc: texinfo-pretest > Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 19:21:27 -0500 (EST) > From: "Robert J. Chassell" <bob@rattlesnake.com> > > The Info system could be enhanced to do the same -- at least, I think > so. Can anyone think why, if some of the work were done by the the > device that provides the Info document, you could not run Info > remotely over a slow connection between its rendering engine and the > source of the Info document? I don't see any problem in principle, except that the rendering engine of the Info reader will have to be redesigned to work on output from some external program that delivers small portions of the displayed text, instead of loading the entire file into memory and working from there. We will also have to design some protocol between the local and remote parts, or teach Info to use some existing protocol, to pass requests to the remote. _______________________________________________ Texinfo home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/ texinfo-pretest@texinfo.org http://ff0.org/mailman/listinfo/texinfo-pretest ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread
* Re: A new online publishing tool for Texinfo documents. 2003-11-26 0:21 ` Robert J. Chassell 2003-11-26 6:25 ` Eli Zaretskii @ 2003-11-26 18:37 ` Kevin Rodgers 2003-11-26 21:36 ` Robert J. Chassell 1 sibling, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread From: Kevin Rodgers @ 2003-11-26 18:37 UTC (permalink / raw) Cc: texinfo-pretest Robert J. Chassell wrote: [completely missing the point] Nic said, "It's an additional format to solve the specific problem of reading documentation that you don't happen to have on your local machine." First of all, I question whether an additional format is required, since that will demand that Emacs and other Info readers be modified to support the new format. Second, everyone seems to agree that Info's search and navigation facilities are superior to HTML; so shouldn't we take advantage of that? Third, Info files can be rendered very quickly (especially compared to HTML) because they have already been pre-processed from the Texinfo source, but the download time for Info is no worse than HTML because it's not much bigger than the source. So use a network transport that's likely to be supported by a remote server like ftp or http, and be happy you've got access to remote documentation at all. Searching an entire document, whether it's in Info format or HTML and whether it's a monolithic entity or split into pieces still requires that the data be downloaded. So download Info files as needed, and cache them in the /tmp filesystem. BTW, I just did `g (/@foo:/usr/local/info/gcc)Invoking GCC' and was able to use the `i' and `s' commands just the way I expected. What am I missing? It seems to me different people are trying to solve different problems within this single discussion thread. -- Kevin Rodgers ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread
* Re: A new online publishing tool for Texinfo documents. 2003-11-26 18:37 ` Kevin Rodgers @ 2003-11-26 21:36 ` Robert J. Chassell 2003-12-02 18:54 ` Kevin Rodgers 0 siblings, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread From: Robert J. Chassell @ 2003-11-26 21:36 UTC (permalink / raw) Nic said, "It's an additional format to solve the specific problem of reading documentation that you don't happen to have on your local machine." Kevin Rodgers <ihs_4664@yahoo.com> replied First of all, I question whether an additional format is required, since that will demand that Emacs and other Info readers be modified to support the new format. But the proposed HTML format has nothing to do with Info! It is a different HTML format. Its intent is to enable standards compliant Web browsers to read documents on the Web (and if Web servers put in the requisit CGI, to enable Web browsers to navigate via search). Second, everyone seems to agree that Info's search and navigation facilities are superior to HTML; so shouldn't we take advantage of that? Right, that is why Info should not be changed (unless someone wants to enhance it by enabling slow connections between an Info doc server and the Info renderer; right now the connection must be fast). Third, Info files can be rendered very quickly (especially compared to HTML) because they have already been pre-processed from the Texinfo source, but the download time for Info is no worse than HTML because it's not much bigger than the source. I do not understand you. It takes me 17 minutes to download the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual. When I do the manual in Info format, I then later read it in Info. I do not wait 17 minutes and then start reading. The goal with the HTML/CGI proposal is that if I were to browse the manual remotely in a Web browser, I would need to download only small parts -- nodes most likely -- quickly, so I would not have to wait 17 minutes. Searching an entire document, whether it's in Info format or HTML and whether it's a monolithic entity or split into pieces still requires that the data be downloaded. No, it does not. That is the point of a CGI script. You do *not* have to download a whole document if the serving computer does the work for you. -- Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8 http://www.teak.cc bob@rattlesnake.com ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread
* Re: A new online publishing tool for Texinfo documents. 2003-11-26 21:36 ` Robert J. Chassell @ 2003-12-02 18:54 ` Kevin Rodgers 2003-12-02 21:56 ` Robert J. Chassell 0 siblings, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread From: Kevin Rodgers @ 2003-12-02 18:54 UTC (permalink / raw) Robert J. Chassell wrote: > Nic said, "It's an additional format to solve the specific problem > of reading documentation that you don't happen to have on your > local machine." > > Kevin Rodgers <ihs_4664@yahoo.com> replied > > First of all, I question whether an additional format is required, > since that will demand that Emacs and other Info readers be > modified to support the new format. > > But the proposed HTML format has nothing to do with Info! It is a > different HTML format. Its intent is to enable standards compliant > Web browsers to read documents on the Web (and if Web servers put in > the requisit CGI, to enable Web browsers to navigate via search). I just wanted to point out that there are divergent goals being discussed in this single thread. > Second, everyone seems to agree that Info's search and navigation > facilities are superior to HTML; so shouldn't we take advantage of > that? > > Right, that is why Info should not be changed (unless someone wants > to enhance it by enabling slow connections between an Info doc server > and the Info renderer; right now the connection must be fast). I don't understand why that is, i.e. why the server <-> client connection speed for HTML is not adequate for Info as well. > Third, Info files can be rendered very quickly (especially compared > to HTML) because they have already been pre-processed from the > Texinfo source, but the download time for Info is no worse than > HTML because it's not much bigger than the source. > > I do not understand you. It takes me 17 minutes to download the Emacs > Lisp Reference Manual. When I do the manual in Info format, I then > later read it in Info. I do not wait 17 minutes and then start > reading. > > The goal with the HTML/CGI proposal is that if I were to browse the > manual remotely in a Web browser, I would need to download only small > parts -- nodes most likely -- quickly, so I would not have to wait 17 > minutes. Right; but I assumed that the remote Info manual is already split into relatively small files, and I should have said that an Info _node_ can be displayed quickly (at least as quickly as an HTML page). And my little experiment showed that you can already browse a remote Info manual, only downloading the subfiles as necessary, using ange-ftp. > Searching an entire document, whether it's in Info format or HTML > and whether it's a monolithic entity or split into pieces still > requires that the data be downloaded. > > No, it does not. That is the point of a CGI script. You do *not* > have to download a whole document if the serving computer does the > work for you. Indeed, I was wrong: even a remote Info file accessed via ange-ftp can be searched incrementally. If the goal is to make remote documentation available in current Info browsers, they just need to be changed to recognize remote file syntax (like ange-ftp, tramp, or http-get.el provide for Emacs). If the goal is to make documentation available for web browsers, makeinfo --html already does that. Right? -- Kevin Rodgers ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread
* Re: A new online publishing tool for Texinfo documents. 2003-12-02 18:54 ` Kevin Rodgers @ 2003-12-02 21:56 ` Robert J. Chassell 2003-12-03 0:42 ` Kevin Rodgers 0 siblings, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread From: Robert J. Chassell @ 2003-12-02 21:56 UTC (permalink / raw) Cc: emacs-devel I just wanted to point out that there are divergent goals being discussed in this single thread. Yes, good point. > No, it does not. That is the point of a CGI script. You do *not* > have to download a whole document if the serving computer does the > work for you. Indeed, I was wrong: even a remote Info file accessed via ange-ftp can be searched incrementally. Are you sure it does this efficiently -- that is to say, will I be able to navigate through a complete `Emacs Lisp Reference Manual' in less than 17 seconds, or will it take me 17 minutes before my `Info-search' expression has got to the last node? My understanding is that ange-ftp/tramp downloads the file or files to the client machine and the search is done by the client. If the goal is to make documentation available for web browsers, makeinfo --html already does that. Right? No, `makeinfo --html' does a poor job; you cannot move around a document well. -- Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8 http://www.teak.cc bob@rattlesnake.com ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread
* Re: A new online publishing tool for Texinfo documents. 2003-12-02 21:56 ` Robert J. Chassell @ 2003-12-03 0:42 ` Kevin Rodgers 0 siblings, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread From: Kevin Rodgers @ 2003-12-03 0:42 UTC (permalink / raw) Robert J. Chassell wrote: > Indeed, I was wrong: even a remote Info file accessed via ange-ftp > can be searched incrementally. > > Are you sure it does this efficiently -- that is to say, will I be > able to navigate through a complete `Emacs Lisp Reference Manual' in > less than 17 seconds, or will it take me 17 minutes before my > `Info-search' expression has got to the last node? 17 minutes to download 711 KB? The uncompressed Info files in the 21-2.8 Emacs Lisp Reference Manual are 2,462,047 bytes; they gzip down to 728,336 bytes. So I think you could download, gunzip, and search the whole thing in a reasonable amount of time. > My understanding is that ange-ftp/tramp downloads the file or files to > the client machine and the search is done by the client. Correct. > If the goal is to make documentation available for web browsers, > makeinfo --html already does that. Right? > > No, `makeinfo --html' does a poor job; you cannot move around a > document well. Well, that's a different problem. First make sure it's generating the best possible HTML, then worry about extending the markup language. -- Kevin Rodgers ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2003-12-03 0:42 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 13+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2003-11-22 20:50 A new online publishing tool for Texinfo documents Nic Ferrier 2003-11-23 16:34 ` Richard Stallman 2003-11-23 16:56 ` Nic Ferrier 2003-11-25 18:36 ` Kevin Rodgers 2003-11-25 20:05 ` Nic Ferrier 2003-11-25 22:38 ` Kim F. Storm 2003-11-26 0:21 ` Robert J. Chassell 2003-11-26 6:25 ` Eli Zaretskii 2003-11-26 18:37 ` Kevin Rodgers 2003-11-26 21:36 ` Robert J. Chassell 2003-12-02 18:54 ` Kevin Rodgers 2003-12-02 21:56 ` Robert J. Chassell 2003-12-03 0:42 ` Kevin Rodgers
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