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Re: SCWM's embedded docs/text proc benchmarks/perl's 10x faster than guile.


> I think we should generate info files. It is widely used in the free
> software community, even a defacto standard perhaps, certainly more so
> for the FSF line.

info is a dying "standard".  If we stick with info, we are relegating
ourselves to obscurity.  There are important features (that people
these days *expect*) that info does not handle.  There is nothing
in info that cannot be expressed with html.  True, most browsers do
not handle previous/next references, but there are hooks in html for them.

Let me ephasize:  html is not an adequate replacement for texinfo,
but it is a good replacement for info.  Docbook is to html as
texinfo is to info.

> I also like typical info readers a lot better than
> typical web readers.

I have some sympathy for this, but that is basically a user interface
issue.  There is nothing preventing a more easily-navigable uder
interface for html, except differing traditions.

I just buit and installed gnome, and I played a litle with the
gnome help browser.  It handles multiple formats, including
html, info files, and man pages.   I like that.  However,
the user inface could do with some work.  It needs:
a) info-style traversal commands (previous, next, etc).
b) better key-bindings

The gnome help-browser is clearly work-in-progress (as is all
of gnome).  Perhaps those of us used to info can help
guide the design into something we can be comfortable with.
The first step would be to get it so that browsing info files
is as nice as when using the info program.  Once that works,
we can do the same thing with html files, at least those that
have the appropriate <LINK> tags (which texi2html generates,
and we should amke sure db2html also generates).

> It also appears to me that getting a working SGML system going on your
> machine is somewhat involved. When the discussion started on the SCWM
> list, somebody posted a 10+ list of packages one needed. As usual, the
> linux community has no problem, since SGML support comes prepackaged
> in all major distributions, but we need to think beyond linux.

I agree, but if releases include html files in the distributions
(just like they are currently supposed to include info files),
I think most people would be happy.

	--Per Bothner
Cygnus Solutions     bothner@cygnus.com     http://www.cygnus.com/~bothner