Re: breadcrumbs for Info . . . . . .

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA>]

> but rather:

>   New Info sub-feature: Info "Up" extension.  MB3 on the "Up" link
>   now displays a menu which lets you "navigate" (urgh) directly to
>   an ancestor node of the current node.  From the keyboard, there
>   is a new command Info-skip-up, which queries you (w/ completion)
>   for an ancestor node to jump to... [etc.  The idea is that mouse
>   or keyboard eventually do the same thing.]

That's not the same: the fact that the breadcrumbs are displayed is an
important part of it: breadcrumbs are not just links, they're primarily
a way for the user to quickly figure out where she is within the whole
document structure.  Once this info is displayed, it's only natural to
make it "active" so you can click on it, but it's a secondary purpose.
After all, with the shallow nature of Texinfo documents, there isn't
much point in providing just the pop-up list you propose, since you can
just hit `u' a couple times to get the same result.

> Bias note: personally, i dislike features that use screen space.
> If there is another line taken for breadcrumbs, i will find a way
> to remove it.

Of course, that's always a problem.  Emacs being what it is, we'll of
course make it an option.  This said, I think it'd be worthwhile to try
and make it all fit onto the existing header-line.

One way to make it might be to abbreviate node names.  But I'm not sure
how best to do that.  Maybe we should try to elide/abbreviate
a (sequence of) word from a node name when that (sequence of) word
already appears in the node's parent.


        Stefan