Re: Any interest in using HTML for locally-installed Texinfo documentation?

["Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>]

Hello,

Gavin Smith <gavinsmith0123@gmail.com> skribis:

> On Sun, Nov 03, 2019 at 03:04:27PM +0100, Ludovic Courtès wrote:

[...]

>> Does the reader fall back to an on-line copy of manuals that are
>> unavailable locally?  That would be nice, though it should probably
>> first ask for user consent.
>
> It doesn't do that yet.  It would have to look at an htmlxref.cnf file or 
> equivalent, as the URL for the remote manual should not be in the locally 
> installed documentation.

Sounds like a plan.

>> I’d love to see an appropriate CSS applied by default to all the locally
>> installed manual.  Perhaps the WebKitGTK code could “force” a CSS to
>> each HTML page?
>
> It is possible using webkit_web_view_new_with_user_content_manager.

Neat.

>> In the future, it’d be great to have syntax highlighting like we have at
>> <https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Using-the-Configuration-System.html>,
>> but… I guess that’s another story.  :-)
>
> How is that done? Are the HTML file post-processed somehow?

Yes, it’s a bit ugly: we post-process the HTML in search of

  <pre class="lisp">

blocks (which correspond to @lisp) pass them through
guile-syntax-highlight.  There’s a bit of CSS for the rainbow
parentheses.  See
<https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/doc/build.scm#n206>.

>> What would be the next steps for you?  Do you plan to have this new
>> reader released as part of the next Texinfo release, or as a separate
>> package?
>
> It would probably be for a separate package.  At the moment the program 
> is called "infog" standing for "Info GTK".

OK.

> There are various things that need to be done before it is ready for 
> release:
> * Allow installing the program, so that it can be run via PATH
> * Handle external links in a web browser (using some kind of user 
> desktop default)
> * I'd like to make the index search completions in a separate pane 
> rather than a pop-up menu, as in the "devhelp" program.
> * Perhaps support for tabs
> * The program uses a deprecated API in the WebKitGTK library to access 
> the DOM of pages.  Allegedly it is possible to use JavaScript to do the 
> same thing, but the documentation is not that helpful on how to do this.
> * There is no text search facility in pages
> * Standardize a location for installing HTML manuals.  What the GNU 
> Coding Standards currently says about "htmldir" is insufficient, as a 
> manual may have a different name to the package it is part of.
> * It would be nice if the text input for a new window could be done as 
> some kind of pop-over widget rather than in a separate dialog box.

Good.  I don’t think any of these are a showstopper, except perhaps the
bit about standardizing HTML installation (and getting distros to
actually do that!).  Other than that, your program is already useful as
it is, IMO.

> I only have a few hours a week to spend on this, so it could take me 
> some time to get through it.
>
> I have been looking at tweaking the output of texi2any so the HTML looks 
> better in this browser, including using mini-tables of contents instead 
> of menus, and the table of contents linking to the top of a page rather 
> than to an anchor a little down the page.

Nice.

Ludo’.