From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Robert J. Chassell" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Divergence in menu appearance between Emacs Info and standalone Info Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 18:45:50 +0000 (UTC) Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Message-ID: References: <200306041404.h54E4SO30552@f7.net> <200306052323.h55NNr4B002965@rum.cs.yale.edu> <9003-Fri06Jun2003125021+0300-eliz@elta.co.il> Reply-To: bob@rattlesnake.com NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1055789353 15717 80.91.224.249 (16 Jun 2003 18:49:13 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 18:49:13 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Mon Jun 16 20:49:11 2003 Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19Rz0V-0003uZ-00 for ; Mon, 16 Jun 2003 20:47:07 +0200 Original-Received: from monty-python.gnu.org ([199.232.76.173]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 19RzO2-0007Up-00 for ; Mon, 16 Jun 2003 21:11:26 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.20) id 19Rz1H-0007Ci-5A for emacs-devel@quimby.gnus.org; Mon, 16 Jun 2003 14:47:55 -0400 Original-Received: from list by monty-python.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.20) id 19Rz0b-0006c6-BV for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 16 Jun 2003 14:47:13 -0400 Original-Received: from mail by monty-python.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.20) id 19Ryzi-0005k3-EZ for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 16 Jun 2003 14:46:19 -0400 Original-Received: from megalith.rattlesnake.com ([140.186.114.245] helo=rattlesnake.com) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.20) id 19RyzJ-0005cv-RG for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 16 Jun 2003 14:45:54 -0400 Original-Received: by rattlesnake.com via sendmail from stdin id (Debian Smail3.2.0.114) Mon, 16 Jun 2003 18:45:50 +0000 (UTC) Original-To: emacs-devel@gnu.org In-reply-to: (message from Reiner Steib on Mon, 16 Jun 2003 14:02:30 +0200) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1b5 Precedence: list List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Archive: List-Unsubscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:15132 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:15132 reiner.steib@gmx.de wrote: In Galeon (Mozilla/5.0 Galeon/1.2.8) you can add the "Links" control element to the toolbar (Preferences/User Interface/Toolbars). An example page is this one: . Yes! Thank you. I had not realized that the W3C consortium had included this in the current official recommendation. Links like this should enable someone to write a program that does regular expression searches within a multipage document, just like `M-s' (Info-search) does in Info. The main problem is that use of such links is voluntary, which means many people won't bother. If they write in Texinfo, then such links can be generated automatically, with no extra effort on the part of the author; but many people do not write in Texinfo. (Hmmm... presumably such links can be generated automatically for documents written in an appropriate XML, too, which helps.) Regardless, links are a step forward. Karl, could you modify `makeinfo' to generate such links automatically when it creates a split HTML document (i.e., when you do not use the `--no-split' option to `makeinfo'.)? As far as I see the requirement is to include next, previous, and contents pointers in the ... segment, right after the ... segment, like this for the `Forbidden-to-Study.html' file: Rah! Rah! Forbidden to Study At the moment, `makeinfo' does much of the work; it already finds the next and previous pages when it creates a node line with next and previous pointers. `makeinfo' does not point you to the table of contents page, but I think that is always in `index.html#Top'. Here is the code that `makeinfo --html' currently generates for the `Forbidden-to-Study.html' file:

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The idea would be to add a `links' to the ... segment (but also keep the current pointers as shown). This way, someone who wrote a regexp searcher would know that it works for all such fully conforming HTML documents, not only for those formatted by `makeinfo' from a Texinfo source (which could be written now, but would have a more limited number of users). Earlier, keichwa@gmx.net wrote ... but for info files remote access does not exist at all! One must not compare info-search with features an arbitrary browser offers; those browser are not optimized for local file access ;) This is partially true, but orthogonal to the issue. (It is partially false, because you can access Info files remotely if you have a fast enough Internet connection. I have done so using VNC. But Info is not designed for Internet connectivity other than NFS or VNC, so few think of it as working remotely.) For remote files, the key navigation issue is that you must download them to search them. That is to say, you must do this unless the file provider has set up a regexp search engine for you on his site and you have an interface to it. Since I doubt the latter will happen, I think that Web browsing will require downloading pages to search, and that is unavoidable albeit awkward and slow for people like me, who have slow net connections. But the good news is that a next/prev/contents link structure enables someone to write a search facility that enables you to navigate through a World Wide Web document without the fear that the search will spread through the Internet and not halt in a humanly reasonable time. And it means that if you have a multi-page Web document on your site -- such as most GNU distributions provide, like Debian I know for sure, and Red Hat, I am pretty sure -- then you can read it through page by page conveniently, like existing `makeinfo --html' produced documents. And if someone writes a regexp searcher, then you could navigate it as conveniently as Info. -- Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8 http://www.teak.cc bob@rattlesnake.com