4 ms·

It makes me happy to see the GNU OS still being assembled, bit by bit. I've written previously about how much I appreciate the Guile info manual. For a docume

It makes me happy to see the GNU OS still being assembled, bit by bit. I've written previously about how much I appreciate the Guile info manual. For a document in a relatively obscure help system (other than Emacs users, who even knows about Texinfo?), it's carefully written with an eye to empowering its users. It's perhaps a bit quixotic, but you get the feeling that the GNU project really wants to deliver an OS written in Scheme all the way down, totally under the control of an enlightened end user. The Shepherd project certainly fits with that vision.

enriquto 8y ago
I love dearly the GNU project and the beautiful, nicely worded documentation which is always a pleasure to read (when rendered as pdf documents). However, the info format is unfathomable; if it is possible to really hate one file format, it must be this one.
- sevensor 8y ago
  I hesitate to speak for emacs users, because I'm not one really, but I suspect the info format feels really comfortable when viewed with emacs.
  - jefft255 8y ago
    It’s nice indeed. Not special, but certainly smooth to use. Never used it outside of emacs though.
  - opan 8y ago
    I started using info more after installing the Guix system. One thing that made me use emacs over info was that with evil-mode you could use vim bindings to read info pages through emacs. It was a bit more like 'less' then.
- badsectoracula 8y ago
  Note that Texinfo != info, the former is a document source format similar to DocBook (but much simpler), the latter is a very simple hypertext format with preformatted text and support for indices (think of it as a text-based CHM). You can use the former to generate the latter, but Texinfo can be used to generate several other types of documents, including plain text, PDF and HTML (and yes, also CHM). Also note that the info file format is independent from the GNU info viewer, that most people associate with, and there are other viewers for it, including pinfo and tkinfo (Tcl/Tk viewer) and some other help systems have support for it, like GNOME's and KDE's help viewers. And yes, there is also support for it on Emacs (which AFAIK is the only viewer with image support). FWIW personally i like using tkinfo.
  - enriquto 8y ago
    > Note that Texinfo != info, Sure. Nothing against texinfo (a bit dated, but perfectly acceptable). My problem is with the ridiculous "info" documentation format for which no browser seems to be even remotely usable. The only one I can cope with is "pinfo", but then again I'm always lost at the stupid hierarchy of "nodes", and no way to do global search/next.
    - girzel 8y ago
      I think info is really only usable inside Emacs. But inside Emacs, it is hands down the best documentation system I've ever used. A properly indexed manual is a joy to use, and beats the pants off anything PDF or HTML-based.
    - badsectoracula 8y ago
      Nodes are just pages, nothing else. Think of them as HTML pages in a browser. Note that info does allow for global search, if anything searching is one of its main strengths over a bunch of HTML files in a directory, and it even allows both for arbitrary text search and for index-based search (where documents can place invisible index markers mid-text and searching for the text of markers as keywords you jump to the exact text position). Of course this relies on the info viewer to implement. In the default GNU info viewer the / key does a search in the current page only, Alt-/ does a search in the current page and any pages linked as subpages (so you can do a search across pages but only at the current node - e.g. if you are in a book about a programming language and you are in the reference section you can search the entire reference, but ignore any tutorials or guides that may be placed in sections adjacent to the reference), i does a search in the index (here the prompt can do entry completion for you by pressing tab) and jumps to the appropriate entry and finally I (shift+i) does a search in the index and displays the results in a generated node (page) with links to each target (you can search this generated node using the / too). Tkinfo provides similar functionality although i do not have an installation at the moment available to ensure (i'm under Windows where i have GNU info via msys2 but not tkinfo). Being a GUI application it does provide a few niceties like displaying the index and search results in separate windows and you also can choose to open links in separate windows (no tab support though). I haven't used pinfo much, although IIRC from the little i used it (mainly to see how an info file i was working on looked there) despite it colorfulness it was a bit limited compared to other viewers.

enriquto 8y ago

I love dearly the GNU project and the beautiful, nicely worded documentation which is always a pleasure to read (when rendered as pdf documents). However, the info format is unfathomable; if it is possible to really hate one file format, it must be this one.

sevensor 8y ago
I hesitate to speak for emacs users, because I'm not one really, but I suspect the info format feels really comfortable when viewed with emacs.
- jefft255 8y ago
  It’s nice indeed. Not special, but certainly smooth to use. Never used it outside of emacs though.
- opan 8y ago
  I started using info more after installing the Guix system. One thing that made me use emacs over info was that with evil-mode you could use vim bindings to read info pages through emacs. It was a bit more like 'less' then.
badsectoracula 8y ago
Note that Texinfo != info, the former is a document source format similar to DocBook (but much simpler), the latter is a very simple hypertext format with preformatted text and support for indices (think of it as a text-based CHM). You can use the former to generate the latter, but Texinfo can be used to generate several other types of documents, including plain text, PDF and HTML (and yes, also CHM). Also note that the info file format is independent from the GNU info viewer, that most people associate with, and there are other viewers for it, including pinfo and tkinfo (Tcl/Tk viewer) and some other help systems have support for it, like GNOME's and KDE's help viewers. And yes, there is also support for it on Emacs (which AFAIK is the only viewer with image support). FWIW personally i like using tkinfo.
- enriquto 8y ago
  > Note that Texinfo != info, Sure. Nothing against texinfo (a bit dated, but perfectly acceptable). My problem is with the ridiculous "info" documentation format for which no browser seems to be even remotely usable. The only one I can cope with is "pinfo", but then again I'm always lost at the stupid hierarchy of "nodes", and no way to do global search/next.
  - girzel 8y ago
    I think info is really only usable inside Emacs. But inside Emacs, it is hands down the best documentation system I've ever used. A properly indexed manual is a joy to use, and beats the pants off anything PDF or HTML-based.
  - badsectoracula 8y ago
    Nodes are just pages, nothing else. Think of them as HTML pages in a browser. Note that info does allow for global search, if anything searching is one of its main strengths over a bunch of HTML files in a directory, and it even allows both for arbitrary text search and for index-based search (where documents can place invisible index markers mid-text and searching for the text of markers as keywords you jump to the exact text position). Of course this relies on the info viewer to implement. In the default GNU info viewer the / key does a search in the current page only, Alt-/ does a search in the current page and any pages linked as subpages (so you can do a search across pages but only at the current node - e.g. if you are in a book about a programming language and you are in the reference section you can search the entire reference, but ignore any tutorials or guides that may be placed in sections adjacent to the reference), i does a search in the index (here the prompt can do entry completion for you by pressing tab) and jumps to the appropriate entry and finally I (shift+i) does a search in the index and displays the results in a generated node (page) with links to each target (you can search this generated node using the / too). Tkinfo provides similar functionality although i do not have an installation at the moment available to ensure (i'm under Windows where i have GNU info via msys2 but not tkinfo). Being a GUI application it does provide a few niceties like displaying the index and search results in separate windows and you also can choose to open links in separate windows (no tab support though). I haven't used pinfo much, although IIRC from the little i used it (mainly to see how an info file i was working on looked there) despite it colorfulness it was a bit limited compared to other viewers.