Re: more than 1,800 dependent packages: website out of date

[Simon Tournier <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com>]

Hi,

On Wed, 04 Oct 2023 at 17:33, Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> wrote:

>> Yeah but for instance I barely use Info because I never remember how to
>> navigate and often I have an approximate idea about what I am looking
>> for and in this case, I am faster with the HTML documentation.
>
> That’s fine, we all have our preferences.  :-)
>
> What makes Info (whether in Emacs or the ‘info’ command) appealing to me
> is that (1) it’s straight on my machine and off-line, (2) I’m sure I’m
> looking at the version of the manual that corresponds to the version I’m
> using, and (3) there are efficient and IMO intuitive navigation key
> bindings (‘n’ for ‘next’, ‘i’ for ‘index’, arrows to scroll, etc.)

Yeah, I never remember Emacs navigation keys because I do not find them
intuitive.  And I consider myself being comfortable with Emacs. :-)

* usually the converse of the key ’f’, here doing action

    f	Follow a cross reference. Prompts for name.

is the key ’b’ but not here, it is ’l’:

    l	Go back to the last node you were at. (chronological)
    b	Go to beginning of node.

Well, as with EWW but I find that counter-intuitive.

* the key ’<’ is counter-intuitive for me

    <	Go to first node ("Top") of current Info file.

compared to EWW for instance,

    <               beginning-of-buffer

Or usually Alt-< is for beginning-of-buffer.

* search is not intuitive: s term1 term2 RET then I expect to just type
RET (as suggested «Use ‘s RET’ to search again for ‘term1 term2’.») but
no: «Point neither on reference nor in menu item description».  So I
have to type again ’s’ then RET.  I can go via Isearch but I am using
Swipper so C-s is not Isearch by default and Swipper does not jump
between the nodes by default, so I have to remember no C-s in this
mode.  Result, counter-intuitive for me.

* last the most important: open a new buffer for reading something still
keeping the other thing.  It is really counter-intuitive: C-u f or C-u m
depending on the nature of the link.  Also it is possible to clone Info
buffer.

All in all is it counter-intuitive for me when on the other hand, all my
needs of navigation are covered by only three:

    Right-Click -> Open… and C-f and Alt-Arrow


> Should we expand
> <https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Documentation.html>?

Well, from my side, I do not see what could be improved.  Or make Info
navigation less counter-intuitive for me? ;-)

Another annoyance, for instance reading your email, I just press ’B RET’
and Emacs opens the link that I browse.  I have nothing similar with
Info.

> Though again, it’s okay if others prefer to browse the HTML doc.

Ok, let be back about your points:

    >         (1) it’s straight on my machine and off-line, (2) I’m sure I’m
    > looking at the version of the manual that corresponds to the version I’m
    > using

About #1, that’s because we do not ship the HTML versions else it would
also be « straight on my machine and off-line ». :-)  For instance, on
Debian:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
$ find /usr/share/ -type f -name "*.html" -print | wc -l
370
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

About #2, it is related to #1. :-)

Well, as I said elsewhere: (a) we need to keep in mind the size of the
documentation and (b) it will be better to also have CSS for a nicer
rendering, :-)

Cheers,
simon