man vs info vs texinfo files

[John Summerfield]

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-03-05 at 23:36 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
>> On Thu, 2009-03-05 at 15:37 -0800, Per Bothner wrote:
>>> Fedora (and GNU systems in general) should stop shipping info files,
>>> and should instead ship the texinfo source files.  The makeinfo
>>> program will convert texinfo files into html or docbook, as well
>>> as old-fashioned info.  Html or docbook is much nicer - you can
>>> use non-monospace fonts (for the body), and the text can be
>>> re-flowed to fit the window.  Also, indexes and cross-references
>>> can take you to a precise location, rather than just a node.
>> Interesting idea. Is there any reason why this wouldn't work?
> 
> Are we then going to require people to use elinks or w3m to view them,
> plus expect them to know where the HTML pages are stored in the first
> place?
> 
> No, the far more sane option is to fix info or pinfo so that it catches
> SIGWINCH and reflows as necessary.
> 
> 

I personally think having more than one format (or rather, not having 
everything in one format) is a pain. I don't like having to guess what 
format documentation us in (man, info, html, pdf, postscript or 
something else).

I do a significant amount of my work at consoles: right now, I have 11 
terminals open, some being konsoles almost all with multiple tabs plus 
four virtual consoles, one of which runs screen, currently imbedding six 
sessions. Often my terminal sessions connect to other computers,
frequently running screen remotely.

That leaves HTML, INFO and man as the only possible formats for me. 
Often (almost always) HTML imbeds graphic images, so I'll rule that one 
out too.

In maybe ten years, I've yet to come to terms with FSF's info command, I 
mostly just pipe it's output into less. Alternatively, I use pinfo.



Much to my surprise, info can display man pages. It's not documented as 
doing so (CentOS5), but I knew pinfo does, so I tested info.

A disadvantage of converting info documents to man is that info 
documents can contain hyperlinks, and these are lost on conversion.


-- 

Cheers
John

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