Re: Stand-alone Info and info-mode inconsistency: end of buffer behavior

[Gavin Smith]

On Fri, Jan 06, 2023 at 09:23:17PM +0100, Arsen Arsenović wrote:
> Evening Eli,
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > That's not true, or at least that's not what I see on my system.  The
> > Emacs Info reader goes to the next node when it reaches the end of the
> > current node.  Maybe your Emacs has some customizations?  If you see
> > the Emacs behavior you describe in "emacs -Q", please describe exactly
> > what you do to reproduce the behavior: which manual you load and what
> > commands/keys you type after that.
> 
> Reproduction steps that work for me:
> 
> 1. emacs -Q --eval '(info "(info)Top")'
> 2. M->
> 3. C-n
> 
> The (info)Top node on my system has a next node ("(info)Getting
> Started"), which pure ``n'' and (Info-next) take me to, but none of the
> in-buffer navigation commands (including <PageUp>/<PageDown>) do.

This can be configured using the scroll-behaviour and cursor-motion-scrolls
variables in .infokey (see Info node (info-stnd)Variables).

The info-stnd manual starts,

  You can read through the rest of this manual by typing <SPC> and <DEL>
  (or <Space> and <Backspace>)

I doubt would help to stop this from working and leave the user stuck
on the Top node.

It was likely made to act this way on the past based on user feedback
and I doubt it is warranted to make such a change now.

> However, I think this is a good thing.  Flipping between pages
> accidentally like this can and does confuse folk who are unfamiliar with
> how nodes work.
> 
> I feel as though the standalone info viewer is one of the most important
> things a new GNU user would run into, and something they would run into
> quite soon, due to it being referenced in all help2man'd manuals, and as
> such, I feel like it's important to get an experience as close as
> possible to what the person completely new to GNU would expect.

Yes, I agree.  It seems that many people have found info difficult
to use, although running "info info", or using the H or h keys
(advertised in the welcome message) seems sufficient to get users
started.


> 
> Thanks, have a wonderful evening.
> -- 
> Arsen Arsenović