Re: terminal escapes in Info files?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>]

>>>>> "Robert" == Robert J Chassell <bob@rattlesnake.com> writes:

    Stefan>    But I don't see why the Info format is superior to the
    Stefan> HTML markup language, ...

    Robert> By default, HTML does not ...

We're not talking about "default" HTML.  True, people using normal
browsers will continue to "enjoy" the "Windows experience".  Too bad
for them.

But there is no reason why HTML produced by a documentation system
shouldn't _require_ (and enforce, by automatically producing them from
eg Texinfo source)

<!-- sibling nodes happen to be in the same file -->
<link rel="prev" "#prev_node"    -- standard in HTML 4.01 (sec 6.12) -- >
<link rel="next" "#next_node"    -- standard in HTML 4.01 (sec 6.12) -- >
<link rel="up"   "up_node.html"  -- a nonstandard link -- >
<link rel="top"  "document.html" -- a nonstandard link -- >
<link rel="dir"  "../index.html" -- a nonstandard link -- >

The only real disadvantage vis-a-vis traditional Texinfo is the
verbosity.  I think the technical problems are reasonably
straightforward; we can have decent Info-style presentation of
automatically-produced HTML within Info or Emacs.

My guess is that HTML provides all the features needed to provide a
target language isomorphic to Info, and it would be at most a couple
days' work to port Emacs's Info reader to such a language.  The
standalone Info reader might or might not be much harder.  I have no
idea how hard it would be to get makeinfo to produce it.

(Not volunteering; I'm perfectly happy with existing Info.  But it
looks to be easy enough that anybody who advocates HTML should be
required to produce such an isomorphic spec and software that provides
all the features that Info currently does.)

Hm ... I suppose texinfo XML provides all this already?

-- 
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