Re: Proposal: Include C Manual from RMS in Emacs git, and/or release

["Arsen Arsenović" <arsen@aarsen.me>]

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Hi Eli,

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Arsen Arsenović <arsen@aarsen.me>
>> Cc: jb@jeremybryant.net,  emacs-devel@gnu.org,  rms@gnu.org
>> Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2024 19:08:40 +0100
>> 
>> > So I don't see how that move could damage the reputation of Texinfo.
>> 
>> Emacs is extremely niche, while reading the documentation of various GNU
>> packages is not.  Ergo, we recommend people to read documentation using
>> info (see e.g. help2man generated output) - as we should.
>
> Actually, I believe most people read the HTML version of the Texinfo
> documentation.

Yes, fair enough, that is likely overall most popular, but I still don't
doubt 'info' is more widespread than Emacs.

>> > Do you have any information to suggest that many people use the
>> > stand-alone reader?
>> 
>> Do you have information to suggest that many people use the in-Emacs
>> reader?  I certainly do use it, so we can put that a mark on the
>> chalkboard.
>
> I think Emacs users use Emacs (of course), and the rest read the
> manuals in their HTML format.  I have yet to see a number of people
> who use the stand-alone reader that cannot be counted on the fingers
> of a single hand.  (And don't misunderstand me: I think the
> stand-alone Info reader is great, and personally invested quite a few
> efforts in developing and porting it.  My Windows port of Texinfo,
> routinely available from the ezwinports site, is one of a couple,
> perhaps even the only one, which includes a fully functional Windows
> port of the stand-alone Info reader.)

Even those that do use the HTML format might sometimes not be able to
conveniently access it (e.g. on a remote machine, or because distros
don't install HTML versions of texinfo documentation).

Also, the HTML format is harder to browse (no convenient index
searching, for instance) currently.  There was a proposed JS-based
enhancement for this interface,[1](archive: [2]), developing that could
remedy this (as long as it implemented graceful degradation so that it
can be viewed without JS).

FTR I do hope that we manage to get a 'properly integrated', 'dir' node
and all, index-searchable, ... installed HTML version of Texinfo
documentation in GNU packages and GNU distributions.  I think the info
file format has some drawbacks (e.g. it's a catfile-style format, with
hard wrapping, which fails on narrow screens of course).  I wonder
whether Emacs could read (the relevant parts of) that HTML.

If not, then maybe a new more Emacs-friendly format to replace the
current info file format is needed.

> Anyway, the initiative for moving info.info to Emacs was from the
> Texinfo developers (I'm sure you can find the relevant discussions in
> the archives).  So if you think it should be moved back, feel free to
> take it up with them.

Yes, I've exchanged mail with Gavin about this before.  I was using
info.info as an example of problems caused by packaging up unrelated
things together in this thread.

In hindsight, I'd also not mind if info-stnd.texi contained a copy of
the Info tutorial that the Emacs info manual includes, so that the
standalone viewers get-info-help-node works always.  What do you think
of that?

If that was to be the case, info-stnd would not need to rely on
info.info (at least for any reason I can think of), and so, this would
become a non-issue.

Have a lovely day.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo-html/index.html
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20190407054314/https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo-html/index.html
-- 
Arsen Arsenović

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