Re: Have you all gone crazy? Was: On being web-friendly and why info must die

[Tom]

Mike Gerwitz <mikegerwitz <at> gnu.org> writes:

> 
> I consider adding JS to be more of a kluge than a solution; while this
> does add additional functionality, it is specific to the page (not
> handled by the web browser), non-standard, and wouldn't function in a
> nice text-based browser.

GUI Emacs has features which don't work on a terminal, yet they are
nice to have. In a text browser it works as a simple HTML page, while 
a modern GUI browser can provide the interactive feature to the user.


> Even as a web developer, I rarely enable JavaScript and consider a web
> page to be broken if it requires it.  In this case, the page would
> function just fine without (and would therefore not be broken), but the
> experience would differ.
> 
> If the goal (according to ESR) is to appeal to the younger crowd, this
> wouldn't do that.

The younger crowd expects interactive web pages (e.g. jumping to 
manual nodes with completion), because they are used to interactive
features on other pages (Gmail, facebook, etc.)

And they expect it to work out of the box, because they know the 
browser can do it. E.g. they won't install an extension just to 
browse Emacs manual nodes interactively when they know the browser
can do the same natively on other pages.

> I see no problem with our current format, which can generate decent HTML
> (though it could be improved upon), and which can be cached by the
> browser for instant page views to already-visited nodes.  Users who do
> care about keyboard-based navigation can use either access keys[0], or
> install an extension (I use Vimperator).  I would not want a web page to
> dictate that for me.

G as hotkey was chosen to replicate the emacs info experience. An emacs
user would naturally want to use the same keys as in info to browse the 
HTML documentation. Why use something else when you can use the same
keys?