Re: The HTML-Info initiative

[Per Bothner]

On 12/27/21 01:02, Gavin Smith wrote:
> I've started it in the TODO.HTML file in the git repo.  It can be read at
>
> https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/texinfo.git/plain/TODO.HTML

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/texinfo.git/plain/TODO.HTML

"However, this system is only appropriate for online manuals, not for
locally installed manuals."

I don't agree: It works prefectly fine for locally installed manuals,
either using file: URLs or http://localhost/.

However, there may be some issues relating to:

"It only handles one manual at a time and does not handle searching for a 
manual."

Cross-manual links could be handled pretty by standarding relative URLs.
I.e. if the emacs/texinfo manual is 
/usr/local/share/doc/{emacs,texinfo}/index.html
and you can get from one to the other using "../{texinfo,emacs}/index.html".
Handling a search path is trickier, but can be done using using a small 
web-server.
(I use libwebsockets for DomTerm.)  However, the webkitgtk-info approach may be 
better
(though less portable).

I tried building the webkitgtk-info branch, but failed:

In file included from hard-locale.c:23:
./locale.h:718:11: fatal error: setlocale_null.h: No such file or directory
  718 | # include "setlocale_null.h"
      |           ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.
make[4]: *** [Makefile:1473: hard-locale.o] Error 1

Didn't investigate.  Looks promising, though.  It seems unaware of and not 
making use
of info.js.  Integration with info.js would be nice - at the very least disable
the latter's sidebar and other duplicated functionality.
--
        --Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://per.bothner.com/