Re: [Groff] Introduction

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

What a lot of traffic there has been on this list lately!  I've read
all the messages in this thread that I have received, and this seems
to be the best one to hang my reply on; but I've taken other thoughts
into account.

On Saturday, 22 October 2005 at 14:36:36 +0200, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
>>> This is true but very unfortunate IMHO.  It isn't very difficult
>>> to write a texinfo file, and there are many benefits to do that.
>>
>> However, I have always regretted, even resented, GNU's transition
>> from "man" to "info" for basic reference.

Agreed.  I've been using info now for nearly 15 years, and I still
find it clumsy and difficult to navigate.

> I *fully* agree.  It seems that you've got the wrong impression that I
> don't like man pages, or that I favour texinfo over man.

I'm glad to hear that.  I do agree that groff documentation should be
written in groff.

>> For instance, though are still far from succeeding, I suspect that
>> the GNU Thought Police really want everyone to use EMACS.
>
> I don't think so.

IIRC Ted was suggesting here that info is easier for Emacs users.  I'm
a convinced (but not evangelical) user of Emacs, and I don't find that
this is the case.  OK, a couple of minor things, like key bindings,
are more intuitive for Emacs users, but that doesn't make it easy to
use.

>> I rarely want to get into the labyrinth of a texinfo document
>> (though I'm pleased it's there I need the more discursive
>> information it contains).
>
> If a texinfo document appears as a labyrinth, it is badly written,
> or rather, it has a bad structure.

This is a reasonable, even definitive, statement.  But I have the
feeling that texinfo encourages such bad structure.  At any rate,
there are a surprising number of texinfo documents that I find
completely useless, although they seem to contain the information I'm
looking for.  You shouldn't need grep(1) to read documentation.

Greg
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