Re: Improve access to documentation in Info format

[Richard Stallman]

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  > 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.

ISTR that sometimes two commands generate the same output in Info and
different output in Tex, and sometimes tw commands generate the same
output in TeX but different in Info files.  But I can't think of an
example right now.

  > > 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).

I agree in some situations.  For instance, if some non-GNU package
does not have documentation written in Texinfo, but does have a manual
written in Sphinx, a "best effort" conversion of Sphinx into Info
could be better, for users, than no Info file.  We should welcome
that.

However, we should explain that Sphinx as source format won't be truly
the equal of Texinfo until it is expetded to make all the distinctions
that Texinfo can make.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)