Hi,
On Wed, 04 Oct 2023 at 17:33, Ludovic Courtès <l...@gnu.org> wrote:
>> Yeah but for instance I barely use Info because I never remember how to
>> navigate and often I have an approximate idea about what I am looking
>> for and in this case, I am faster with the HTML documentation.
>
> That’s fine, we all have our preferences. :-)
>
> What makes Info (whether in Emacs or the ‘info’ command) appealing to me
> is that (1) it’s straight on my machine and off-line, (2) I’m sure I’m
> looking at the version of the manual that corresponds to the version I’m
> using, and (3) there are efficient and IMO intuitive navigation key
> bindings (‘n’ for ‘next’, ‘i’ for ‘index’, arrows to scroll, etc.)
Yeah, I never remember Emacs navigation keys because I do not find them
intuitive. And I consider myself being comfortable with Emacs. :-)
* usually the converse of the key ’f’, here doing action
f Follow a cross reference. Prompts for name.
is the key ’b’ but not here, it is ’l’:
l Go back to the last node you were at. (chronological)
b Go to beginning of node.
Well, as with EWW but I find that counter-intuitive.
* the key ’<’ is counter-intuitive for me
< Go to first node ("Top") of current Info file.
compared to EWW for instance,
< beginning-of-buffer
Or usually Alt-< is for beginning-of-buffer.
* search is not intuitive: s term1 term2 RET then I expect to just type
RET (as suggested «Use ‘s RET’ to search again for ‘term1 term2’.») but
no: «Point neither on reference nor in menu item description». So I
have to type again ’s’ then RET. I can go via Isearch but I am using
Swipper so C-s is not Isearch by default and Swipper does not jump
between the nodes by default, so I have to remember no C-s in this
mode. Result, counter-intuitive for me.
* last the most important: open a new buffer for reading something still
keeping the other thing. It is really counter-intuitive: C-u f or C-u m
depending on the nature of the link. Also it is possible to clone Info
buffer.
All in all is it counter-intuitive for me when on the other hand, all my
needs of navigation are covered by only three:
Right-Click -> Open… and C-f and Alt-Arrow
> Should we expand
> <https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Documentation.html>?
Well, from my side, I do not see what could be improved. Or make Info
navigation less counter-intuitive for me? ;-)
Another annoyance, for instance reading your email, I just press ’B RET’
and Emacs opens the link that I browse. I have nothing similar with
Info.
> Though again, it’s okay if others prefer to browse the HTML doc.
Ok, let be back about your points:
> (1) it’s straight on my machine and off-line, (2) I’m sure I’m
> looking at the version of the manual that corresponds to the version I’m
> using
About #1, that’s because we do not ship the HTML versions else it would
also be « straight on my machine and off-line ». :-) For instance, on
Debian:
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
$ find /usr/share/ -type f -name "*.html" -print | wc -l
370
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
About #2, it is related to #1. :-)
Well, as I said elsewhere: (a) we need to keep in mind the size of the
documentation and (b) it will be better to also have CSS for a nicer
rendering, :-)
Cheers,
simon
