Re: Improve access to documentation in Info format

[Suhail Singh]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>   > Could you comment on the user-facing features that would no longer work
>   > with such "visibly wrong" translated-from-other-formats Info manuals?
>
> "Natural" markup notations that try to resemble ordinary punctuation
> have trouble making these distinctions.  They are based on WYGIWYW,
> What You Get Is What You Write.  So if several markup constructs get
> you the same thing in one output format, you have to write them the
> same way in the source, so they all get you the same thing in each
> output format.

To paraphrase, the user-facing features that would no longer work with
such "visibly wrong" translated-from-other-formats Info manuals is the
ability to generate output that looks similar in one output format while
looking different in other output formats.

> I am not saying it is _impossible_ to extend any of those markup
> systems to make these distinctions.  Quite the contrary, I hope
> someone will invent a way, and implement it.  Then, with luck, we
> could perhaps adopt that markup system for source code for our
> manuals.
>
> But this would involve making the markup system less "natural".
>
> Untll someone invents that, we can't use a natural markup notation
> to replace Texinfo format.

Agreed, natural markup may not be a substitute for Texinfo.  And yet,
there may still be utility in providing _best effort_ but "visibly
wrong" Info manuals for packages that use other documentation generation
systems (for instance, Sphinx).

The value for me, as a user, would be to be able to use Emacs's
excellent Info viewing capabilities for such packages.

-- 
Suhail