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Info is great for people who live and breathe Emacs, and terrible for non-Emacs users who are just trying to figure out how to get something done. If it's been

Info is great for people who live and breathe Emacs, and terrible for non-Emacs users who are just trying to figure out how to get something done. If it's been a while since you last used it, you probably have to refresh yourself on the navigation commands, and the really useful features (the index[1] and incremental search[2]) are buried in different sub-nodes of the Info info manual. As sibling commenters have mentioned, the Info tooling and format encourages people to split up their content into a bunch of nodes. In my experience, ~80% of Info manuals would be better if they were just concatenated into a single node, which the user could quickly Ctrl-F through with the tool of their choice. [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/info-stnd/info-stnd.html#Index-Commands https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/info-stnd/info-s... [2] https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/info-stnd/info-stnd.html#Searching-Commands https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/info-stnd/info-s...

thom 7y ago
You can use arrow keys and enter to navigate if you want, or tab like in every other hypertext system in the world. The search key is exactly the same as man, as well as supporting the same ones as readline, and they work across the whole file. I mean, it's 2019, it's a lost argument, but it'd be a shame to think it was lost on this basis.
clarry 7y ago
Fwiw I used Emacs as my go-to editor & IRC client for a few years but I just could not bring myself to like info much at all. The format feels more suitable for something that wants to be a book. I don't want manuals to read like books.
jmclnx 7y ago
Yes, info is horrendous, I hate to say this about a free documentation system, but they could not come up with a worse environment if they tried. But the good news is I read GNU is moving away from INFO for something else, forgot what it was.

thom 7y ago

You can use arrow keys and enter to navigate if you want, or tab like in every other hypertext system in the world. The search key is exactly the same as man, as well as supporting the same ones as readline, and they work across the whole file. I mean, it's 2019, it's a lost argument, but it'd be a shame to think it was lost on this basis.

clarry 7y ago

Fwiw I used Emacs as my go-to editor & IRC client for a few years but I just could not bring myself to like info much at all. The format feels more suitable for something that wants to be a book. I don't want manuals to read like books.

jmclnx 7y ago

Yes, info is horrendous, I hate to say this about a free documentation system, but they could not come up with a worse environment if they tried. But the good news is I read GNU is moving away from INFO for something else, forgot what it was.