Re: terminal escapes in Info files?

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> Is HTML adequate for the job of replacing info format?  Yes, it does
> something vaguely similar, but that does not mean the answer is yes.
> Does the HTML output produced by makeinfo give just as good results
> in a browser as info files do in the info readers?  Can we support
> *all* the features of info just as well as we do now?

I don't think that the main idea was to replace the various info
readers by browsers, but to change the info format to a strict subset
of HTML, and then make the info readers recognize this subset as an
external format.

The info readers would not need to be able to understand arbitrary
HTML, just the specific HTML subset output by whatever tool was used
for generating it, and native HTML browsers would not necessarily
support everything the info readers could.

I think the first sensible step would be to augment the HTML
generating scripts in the texinfo distribution so as to include the
_complete_ information available in info file format, probably as
some tags usually ignored by typical HTML browsers.

Once the complete information is available in the HTML files, one can
write a reader for it.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum