From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Stefan Monnier Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Emacs documentation. Was My emacs was upgraded and I am a novice again Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2007 00:41:25 -0400 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1190612439 22593 80.91.229.12 (24 Sep 2007 05:40:39 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2007 05:40:39 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Sep 24 07:40:35 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1IZggI-0006LG-Jb for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 24 Sep 2007 07:40:30 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1IZggF-00082j-W6 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 24 Sep 2007 01:40:28 -0400 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!news1.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local01.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.umontreal.ca!news.umontreal.ca.POSTED!not-for-mail Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2007 23:41:25 -0500 Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/23.0.50 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:zdKjfBsv6X6BlBcTpZfdJMLzatY= Original-Lines: 47 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 132.204.27.213 Original-X-Trace: sv3-4Ax0IGmYzMpx9eAj28mNXlMwJx3+h/wtYMmN9lIXW67TgOn5Vj4o/7Op/9sf+5xhhN4qPrLZid/aeMR!nWyE0LnrI4RRpnHQh4WxiE7xZdkxNAvBs5IrPT4XCLjNpc/tU63HxDvvV5/q0qyBxBWMzledOviy!sLa37UD3NFEVUBhsDQ== Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@umontreal.ca X-DMCA-Complaints-To: abuse@umontreal.ca X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.35 Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:152281 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:47790 Archived-At: >> Again, you are confusing format and reader. The Texinfo format is >> archaic (but nevertheless quite alive). The reader is what Emacs >> offers you. Nobody has ever proposed a user interface that would be >> more efficient or convenient than Emacs' current info reader. > Caveat. When used to it? It would be more constructive to tell us which part of the Info reader you found confusing or lacking. It used to be a bit tricky to use back when it didn't support mouse-clicks to follow links, but nowadays I find it to work largely like web-browsers do, just with better search capabilities and while using a tiny fraction of the memory (and time) taken by Firefox to display html documentation. > My offer is to convert the Emacs documentation into docbook, version 5 > and work with those interested to improve it/bring it up to scratch. Requirements: 1 - the documentation should be readable on-line from within Emacs. 2 - from a Linux/xterm/PuTTY console as well. 3 - make sure it's as easy to write docbook with Emacs than it is to write Texinfo. 4 - have convincing arguments about why docbook is superior. 5 - of course the documentation should also be usable without a screen (e.g. emacspeak). 6 - All of the above with tools covered at least by a Free Software license, or maybe even with the copyright transferred to the FSF. There may be a few more, but I think it's a good starting point. Number 1 means either a robust Docbook->Info translator, or a new elisp package which renders Docbook (or some other intermediate format generated from Docbook) directly in Emacs on the fly. This could potentially use a bit of C-level coding, linking to xml-processing libraries as long as they are sufficiently widely supported. And of course, the features should be a superset, so we need at least a good indexing system and a full-body search. > No point if the actual documenters are unwilling to move to XML though. I don't think it's impossible to make them move, but there's going to be a lot of resistance: just like in nature you see species which may seem just "inferior" but they have their niche and they have developed specific features we just don't understand which makes them better suited in those niches. Stefan