From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: sirgazil Subject: Re: Any interest in using HTML for locally-installed Texinfo documentation? Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2019 09:01:52 -0500 Message-ID: <8ffd1d45-eb70-a049-6188-1a84fb300827@zoho.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([209.51.188.92]:43738) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hAxVv-0004vL-MP for guix-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 01 Apr 2019 10:02:20 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hAxVt-0008Cn-RC for guix-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 01 Apr 2019 10:02:15 -0400 Received: from sender4-pp-o95.zoho.com ([136.143.188.95]:25582) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hAxVp-00083B-1b for guix-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 01 Apr 2019 10:02:12 -0400 In-Reply-To: Content-Language: en-US List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: guix-devel@gnu.org Hello, Gavin :) El 1/04/19 a las 7:55 a. m., Gavin Smith escribi=C3=B3: > Dear Guix developers, >=20 > I hope I am not intruding by advertising a project that may be of > interest to you. >=20 > Documentation for GNU packages and others is often installed in the > Info format, a plain text format. Using a plaintext based format for > documentation does not take advantage of bitmapped displays that have > been available for decades. It does not allow styling of text or > reflowing of text. Much information is lost in the conversion from > Texinfo to Info and any attempt in, for example, Emacs to re-add this > information is unreliable. >=20 > Nonetheless, Info viewers have continued to have advantages over web > browsers. They are fast, and have features for searching the manual > with index lookup. They allow the use of keyboard commands. >=20 > In attempt to bring some of the benefits of the Info viewers to HTML > documentation in web browsers, in 2017, as part of Google Summer of > Code, Matthieu Lirzin worked on a JavaScript interface that works with > the HTML that texi2any produces. His work is substantially complete. > A manual with this interface added is at > https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo-html/Overview.html. > All the important keyboard commands that work in the Info viewers are > implemented, including index lookup. >=20 > The code he produced is in the js/ subdirectory of the Texinfo git > repository, and also available at > https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/texinfo/texinfo-js-0.0.90.tar.gz >=20 > I believe this work has great potential to increase the ease of > accessing documentation, including documentation locally installed on > a user's own computer. When a user is using a bitmapped display (e.g. > with X11), this could become the default way that they access > documentation. >=20 > I am contacting you because the distribution level may be the best > place to push this forward. There are two reasons: > * The distribution could take care of installation of HTML > documentation files (at the moment, there is no standard place to > install these, and Automake does not support installing HTML files > generated from Texinfo). > * It could also take responsibility for checking web browser > compatibility. Even if we don't use the JavaScript interface for > documentation on the GNU website due to browser compatibility > concerns, an OS distribution would have control over which browser was > used to view documentation. >=20 > Although I have little knowledge of Guix, it is the natural choice of > operating system distribution to contact about this possibility, as > both Texinfo and Guix are GNU projects. >=20 > If there is nobody who wants to take this forward within Guix, then > suggestions would also be welcome on how to otherwise push this > forward. I didn't know this project existed, I wanted something like this. As a high-level user of computers, I'd like to see this kind of=20 documentation available both in the desktop and on the Web. I support it. Thanks for the information, --=20 Luis Felipe L=C3=B3pez Acevedo http://sirgazil.bitbucket.io/