Info replacement?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> skribis:

>   > But HTML itself lacks the notion of indexes or cross-manual references,
>   > for instance (cross-manual references must work both with on-line copies
>   > and with locally installed manuals.)
>
> It is true that these concepts as such do not appear in the specs
> of HTML.  But there are ways to deal with that.
> For instance, we could define a particular structure of HTML code
> to represent the index of a manual.

A similar hack would be needed for menus.

> As for cross-manual references, can't we represent them
> as links?

URLs are either absolute (which would prevent use of locally-installed
manuals), or relative (which would typically force manuals to be
installed in same directory.)

Conversely, the Info mechanism whereby manuals are looked up in a search
path should be preserved, IMO.


TTN proposed a new output format, IXIN, as a possible Info replacement
more than a year ago:

  http://gnuvola.org/software/ixin/

It seems forward-looking, takes into account the strengths and
shortcomings of Info; there’s a written spec and code to work with it.

What about considering this option when it comes to replacing Info?

Thanks,
Ludo’.