Re: idea for Google Summer of Code project: html-reading info

[Per Bothner]

On 02/11/2016 11:25 PM, Gavin Smith wrote:
> On 10 February 2016 at 19:42, Per Bothner <address@hidden> wrote:
> > I suggest the texinfo project sponsor the following proposed project
> > for Google Summer of Code, under the GNU umbrella.   Ideally we'd
> > want two mentors.  I can be one of them, but it would be good to
> > have someone familiar with the internals of the info program.
> >
> > ** Enhance GNU info documentation reader to read html files **
>
> I don't know a huge deal about Google Summer of Code and if it can be
> useful. Does it have a good track record at producing an improvement
> that continues after the project is finished?

I've mentored GSoc 3 times (2 different students), an they've all produced
useful code. Some may have needed polishing, but it has at least been useful
as a prototype.

It various, but many free software projects have benefited from GSoC 
contributions.
(And it's not just the specific contribution, but also to encourage fresh blood
on free software projects.)

> > We would like to deprecate the info format as a distribution format, while
> > still
> > using the texinfo source format and tool-chain.  Instead, using html as the
> > primary distribution format makes sense; we already have the tools to
> > generate html.
>
> It would make sense if the Info format didn't already exist and the
> files were already being installed as HTML. Then it would make sense
> to use the contents of those HTML files for displaying on a terminal.
> But doing it this way now would add little to what we've already got,
> apart from the text filling issue you mentioned.

The advantage long-term is simplification:
(1) People wouldn't have to install *both* info and html files;
(2) the texinfo project wouldn't have to maintain tools to generate and use 
info files.

> The goal of having a reader that can read html files would be to take
> advantage of graphical displays. Creating such a thing would be a
> better use of someone's time (for example, Google Summer of Code).

We already have a reader that can read html files - it's called a web browser.
We  have to clarify what we want from a "graphical documentation viewer"
*beyond* what we have.  If it the keyboard-centric UI - if so, the simplest
(and maybe best) solution is JavaScript and event handlers.

If is know where to find the installed system documentation files, a
simple shell script can file the files and then call a browser.

If you want something like the info program but with graphics (i.e.
the package including keyboard-centric UI, searching for system files,
and maybe other points), then it's slightly more difficult.  I think
the best solution is an embedded (special-purpose) web-browser,
such as DomTerm uses.  I.e. using a browses as the "GUI API" for desktop
(and smaller) computers.  There are various ways to do; I've explored
some with DomTerm.  I'm not sure what is the best approach.  I keep
coming back to using QTWebEngine (which is a Qt API for an embedded
Chromium/Blink browser), but I haven't tried it.  So far, the nicest
UI is when using FireFox/XUL, and that is both simple and fairly powerful,
but that is being deprecated and Mozilla is busy working on a new more
browser-neutral framework.

Rather than the texinfo project trying to write a garphical
documentation views, it makes sense to leverage off (and share the
effort) with the DomTerm project, IMO.
--
        --Per Bothner
address@hidden   http://per.bothner.com/