Re: CSS file for texinfo HTML output

[Per Bothner]

On 02/09/2016 10:44 AM, Gavin Smith wrote:
> Other problems come to mind:
> * Intermanual links: locally installed manuals should be preferred.

The easiest is if you assume the manuals are located in the same "logical" 
directory.
By "logical" I mean you could also have a tree of symlinks:

manuals/elisp.html -> whatever
manuals/emacs.html -> whatever

Assume you're reading the Emacs manual, with the location
file:///whatever/manuals/emacs.html .  You click on a link
<a href="elisp.html#Buffers">Buffer functions</a> .
The browser doesn't know about symlinks, so it resolves elisp.html
relative to the "current" URL, yielding file:///whatever/manuals/elisp.html

> * Search path for manuals.

Search paths are more difficult.  I don't know a way to trap "failing"
location changes.

However, it is possible to add an event handler for the "click" event.
Its handler can do whatever you want to do - subject to whatever
JavaScript lets you do - which depends on your browser environment.

> * How the locally installed HTML pages are accessed, in a standard web
> browser or a special documentation viewer that happens to use HTML as
> its format.

As the author of DomTerm (http://domterm.org), I think that would make
a great framework for an info program: It's a general-purpose terminal
emulator, based on web technologies.  My idea is for the info program
to check if it is running under DomTerm, and if so it "loads" the html
document into an iframe of the same DomTerm instance.  The info program
can use escape sequences to communicate with the documentation iframe.
For example, it can trap clicks and search for the correct manual.

However, we probably still need an info solution for plain vt100-style
terminals.  One idea is for the info program to call a little helper
program which would use libxml to convert the html into plain text,
including line-wrapping as appropriate.  (That is one reason that html
output should be well-formed XML.)
--
        --Per Bothner
address@hidden   http://per.bothner.com/