Re: SCWM's embedded docs/text proc benchmarks/perl's 10x faster than guile.

[Per Bothner <bothner@cygnus.com>]

> It is my opinion that info is the best widely-used documentation
> *system* out there.

Info has its strengths, but is lacking in important areas.

> not as long as the FSF sticks behind it.

Hopefully, we can come up with something better, and the FSF will switch,
once the tools are there, and there is a transition strategy.

>    Per> features (that people these days *expect*) that info does not
>    Per> handle.  There is nothing in info that cannot be expressed
>
> please elaborate.

Graphics, math, colors, fonts.  I agree fonts are a frill for
most documentation, but they make the docuemntation look both
nicer and more readable, and why should online documentation look
crappier than printed documentation in this day and age?

> Your attitude is that html is as flexible a markup language as info,
> and could in principle eventually support all the ease of browsing
> that today's info systems have.

No, my attitude is that *today* *standard* html supports all the
ease of browsing that the info format has.  The problem is not html;
it is that most *browsers* do not not support hierarchical browsing
as well as the info *program*.  That is a relatively easy matter
of changing some key-bindings.

> My attitude is that we already have a flexible documentation browser!
> why abandon it?

Because it is a dead-end, non-extensible, lacks critical features,
does not have visual appeal (important for marketing of GNU, if
nothing else), has very little use outside GNU, and because all its
features can be subsumed by something better *and* more popular.

Info was great;  it is time to move forwards.  We are no longer limited
to character-based user-interfaces, and people expect more.

	--Per Bothner
Cygnus Solutions     bothner@cygnus.com     http://www.cygnus.com/~bothner