* info reference syntax @ 2009-01-09 19:22 Dan Davison 2009-01-09 19:27 ` Lennart Borgman 0 siblings, 1 reply; 7+ messages in thread From: Dan Davison @ 2009-01-09 19:22 UTC (permalink / raw To: help-gnu-emacs mailing list What does this syntax mean? ,---- | See Info node `(viper)Top'. `---- Is there some way of using it to immediately access the info node referred to? Where is it documented? Thanks! Dan -- http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~davison ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: info reference syntax 2009-01-09 19:22 info reference syntax Dan Davison @ 2009-01-09 19:27 ` Lennart Borgman 2009-01-09 21:12 ` Dan Davison [not found] ` <mailman.4438.1231535588.26697.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> 0 siblings, 2 replies; 7+ messages in thread From: Lennart Borgman @ 2009-01-09 19:27 UTC (permalink / raw To: help-gnu-emacs mailing list On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 8:22 PM, Dan Davison <davison@stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote: > What does this syntax mean? > > ,---- > | See Info node `(viper)Top'. > `---- > > Is there some way of using it to immediately access the info node > referred to? M-: (info "(viper) Top") ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: info reference syntax 2009-01-09 19:27 ` Lennart Borgman @ 2009-01-09 21:12 ` Dan Davison [not found] ` <mailman.4438.1231535588.26697.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> 1 sibling, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread From: Dan Davison @ 2009-01-09 21:12 UTC (permalink / raw To: help-gnu-emacs mailing list On Fri, Jan 09, 2009 at 08:27:40PM +0100, Lennart Borgman wrote: > On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 8:22 PM, Dan Davison <davison@stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote: > > What does this syntax mean? > > > > ,---- > > | See Info node `(viper)Top'. > > `---- > > > > Is there some way of using it to immediately access the info node > > referred to? > > M-: (info "(viper) Top") Great, thanks. That is useful to know. "(viper) Top" still seems like a pretty weird syntax. Just out of curiosity, is there some explanation? I see that the shell version is 'info filename nodename'. And according to wikipedia info was written for GNU/linux. So it's a post-linux emacs design? Wouldn't (info filename &optional nodename) have been more natural? Dan > -- http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~davison ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
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* Re: info reference syntax [not found] ` <mailman.4438.1231535588.26697.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> @ 2009-01-12 13:56 ` Xah Lee 2009-01-12 19:03 ` Eli Zaretskii 2009-01-12 17:00 ` B. T. Raven 1 sibling, 1 reply; 7+ messages in thread From: Xah Lee @ 2009-01-12 13:56 UTC (permalink / raw To: help-gnu-emacs On Jan 9, 1:12 pm, Dan Davison <davi...@stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote: > On Fri, Jan 09, 2009 at 08:27:40PM +0100, Lennart Borgman wrote: > > On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 8:22 PM, Dan Davison <davi...@stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote: > > > What does this syntax mean? > > > > ,---- > > > | See Info node `(viper)Top'. > > > `---- > > > > Is there some way of using it to immediately access the info node > > > referred to? > > > M-: (info "(viper) Top") > > Great, thanks. That is useful to know. > > "(viper) Top" still seems like a pretty weird syntax. Just out of > curiosity, is there some explanation? I see that the shell version is > 'info filename nodename'. And according to wikipedia info was written > for GNU/linux. So it's a post-linux emacs design? Wouldn't > > (info filename &optional nodename) > > have been more natural? it'd be much better if emacs adopted html as its standard doc format. It would than just be: http://gnu.org/doc/emacs/viper/top.html in this format, every programer understand what it is. In “(info "(viper)Top")” or “(viper)Top”, maybe 0.001% of programers knew what it is. If we count among emacs users who used emacs for no more than 2 years, the percentage is perhaps 10%. Personally, i use emacs daily, staying in emacs most of the time when using computer, since 1998, and have been using text terminal based emacs exclusively from 1998 to 2005. I didn't know what is “(info "...")” until 2005 or so thru chatting in freenode's emacs irc. Adopting html as standard doc format is easy to do, in fact mostly just a political gesture. Texinfo can already convert to html, and most if not all GNU's doc are already presented in html format on GNU's site. with adoption of html, people will naturally citing doc by url instead of “info xyz”. This will help understanding and consequently spread emacs. For example, if in a discussion in some programing forum, someone might mention “look (info xyz) in emacs”. Vast majority of readers wouldn't understand what that is will simply ignore it. But if html doc is official, then the citing would be “http://gnu.org/doc/ xyz.html”, and those who saw this are very likely to click it. this wouldn't effect emacs much since emacs can and should still use info doc in emacs as a integrated system. But down the road, say in 5 years, emacs will need to deprecate texinfo eventually. The HTML/XHTML/ CSS/JavaScript world is literally with few million more users and developers. Their tools, technical power, extensibility, adoption... in every area, are few order of magnitude better than textinfo. In fact, i wouldn't be surprised that modern browser such as Firefox actually load html doc faster than a comparative info file. By adopting html now, it can pave the way for emacs transition to using html/xhtml as integrated doc component. For example, currently there's w3m for reading html. However, it's some 5 times slower than Firefox, and some 5 times slower than info reading texinfo. However, this can be improved. One could have html/xml parser buildin elisp as c code (or borrowing the rendering engine from firefox), so that reading html docs in emacs is acceptably fast as current reading in info. the integrated nature of info in emacs is really joy to use, especially programing in elisp. You can lookup any function or keyword in the lang so easily. However, if the lang is not elisp but perl, python, php, etc, then it's not so easy because you often have to download and install a info version of their doc (if it exist at all), and depending whether the guy who implemented your lang's mode took the fancy to implement info doc lookup features. (10 years ago, some mode would still support info doc. Today, as far as i know, nobody bothered with info version of docs.) When emacs accepted more html docs, it would mean the integrated doc feature automatically apply to all langs, such as java, perl, python, ruby, php, javascript... since their official doc are all html. Xah ∑ http://xahlee.org/ ☄ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: info reference syntax 2009-01-12 13:56 ` Xah Lee @ 2009-01-12 19:03 ` Eli Zaretskii 0 siblings, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread From: Eli Zaretskii @ 2009-01-12 19:03 UTC (permalink / raw To: help-gnu-emacs > From: Xah Lee <xahlee@gmail.com> > Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2009 05:56:51 -0800 (PST) > > it'd be much better if emacs adopted html as its standard doc format. Unless someone sets out to rewrite all the gazillion Emacs features in info.el and info-look.el to work with HTML, this ain't gonna happen, because those features are too useful to give up. > this wouldn't effect emacs much since emacs can and should still use > info doc in emacs as a integrated system. But down the road, say in 5 > years, emacs will need to deprecate texinfo eventually. The HTML/XHTML/ > CSS/JavaScript world is literally with few million more users and > developers. If you'd talk about XML or DocBook, I could perhaps believed you. But the formats you mention cannot replace Texinfo because they are not powerful enough to support features Texinfo has today, such as indexing, and don't have a macro system to express useful constructs such as @defun. Without these, it's a PITA to write any serious software documentation. We _could_ use HTML as an _output_ format (as opposed to source), which is what I was talking above (makeinfo supports HTML output for a very long time now). But to replace the source language with something else, that something else needs to be at least as powerful and convenient as Texinfo, and it needs tools to generated both printed and on-line docs from the same source. > In fact, i wouldn't be surprised that modern browser such as Firefox > actually load html doc faster than a comparative info file. Surprise me! give some measurements for a change. > Today, as far as i know, nobody bothered with info version of docs. "Nobody" is, of course, slightly exaggerated, as every GNU package has Info docs, which in practice means every important piece of software on a GNU/Linux machine is documented in Info. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: info reference syntax [not found] ` <mailman.4438.1231535588.26697.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> 2009-01-12 13:56 ` Xah Lee @ 2009-01-12 17:00 ` B. T. Raven 1 sibling, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread From: B. T. Raven @ 2009-01-12 17:00 UTC (permalink / raw To: help-gnu-emacs Dan Davison wrote: > On Fri, Jan 09, 2009 at 08:27:40PM +0100, Lennart Borgman wrote: >> On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 8:22 PM, Dan Davison <davison@stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote: >>> What does this syntax mean? >>> >>> ,---- >>> | See Info node `(viper)Top'. >>> `---- >>> >>> Is there some way of using it to immediately access the info node >>> referred to? >> M-: (info "(viper) Top") > > Great, thanks. That is useful to know. > > "(viper) Top" still seems like a pretty weird syntax. Just out of > curiosity, is there some explanation? I see that the shell version is > 'info filename nodename'. And according to wikipedia info was written > for GNU/linux. So it's a post-linux emacs design? Wouldn't > > (info filename &optional nodename) > > have been more natural? > > Dan This is essentially what it is. Try C-h f info and you read: " info is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `info.el'. It is bound to C-h i, <f1> i, <help> i. (info &optional FILE-OR-NODE BUFFER) Enter Info, the documentation browser. Optional argument FILE-OR-NODE specifies the file to examine; the default is the top-level directory of Info. Called from a program, FILE-OR-NODE may specify an Info node of the form `(FILENAME)NODENAME'. Optional argument BUFFER specifies the Info buffer name; the default buffer name is *info*. If BUFFER exists, just switch to BUFFER. Otherwise, create a new buffer with the top-level Info directory. " ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
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* Re: info reference syntax [not found] <mailman.4426.1231528955.26697.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> @ 2009-01-12 16:51 ` B. T. Raven 0 siblings, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread From: B. T. Raven @ 2009-01-12 16:51 UTC (permalink / raw To: help-gnu-emacs Dan Davison wrote: > What does this syntax mean? > > ,---- > | See Info node `(viper)Top'. > `---- > > Is there some way of using it to immediately access the info node > referred to? Where is it documented? > > Thanks! > > Dan > This seems to be programese for the more natural sequence of keystrokes: C-h i m viper This will put you in an info mode buffer with File: viper Node: Top ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2009-01-12 19:03 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 7+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2009-01-09 19:22 info reference syntax Dan Davison 2009-01-09 19:27 ` Lennart Borgman 2009-01-09 21:12 ` Dan Davison [not found] ` <mailman.4438.1231535588.26697.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> 2009-01-12 13:56 ` Xah Lee 2009-01-12 19:03 ` Eli Zaretskii 2009-01-12 17:00 ` B. T. Raven [not found] <mailman.4426.1231528955.26697.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> 2009-01-12 16:51 ` B. T. Raven
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