Re: Ideas about default HTML output?

[Karl Berry]

    to have the best output that takes what is better in both.

Yes.

    So, what would you like as default html output? More precisely, do you
    think that the texi2html headers are great or bad, 

Hmm.  I like seeing the node names, as makeinfo does.

In the alternative, with texi2html's graphics, I'd find it more
comprehensible if they were in the order
<< < Up > >>.

I like having the explicit link to Top and Index, as texi2html does.
(But what do you do when there's more than one index?)

The link to Sec_About (and that whole section) does not appeal to me.
The output should be self-explanatory.

Normally the Contents link will be essentially the same as Top,
therefore I think it's not needed.

Noticed in passing: I think texi2html's between-node rules are too big
-- just a simple <hr> seems enough?

    what about the footer,

I've never been too fond of the texi2html footer.  It's very often
irrelevant who generated the document and the generation date can be
misleading (the sources might be ancient).  That information is not
(visibly) written in any other output format.  Of course it's fine/good
to have it all in comments in the source.

    do you like the letters in indices, 

Yes.  I like texi2html's index formatting better.  Except there should
be more space between the index term and the "page" reference -- looks
like it's just a single space in the xmaxima manual.

    the menu formatting?

Here I kind of like makeinfo's list formatting with the bullets.

    A typical manual split by nodes may be found here:
    http://maxima.sourceforge.net/docs/xmaxima/xmaxima.html

    and unsplit:
    http://home.gna.org/guile-dbi/guile-dbi.html

Noticed in passing: I do not like the underlining of the defun words
like "Function".  I'm not sure what should be done, bold maybe, but
underlining has such a strong association with links on the web.

    Manuals formatted with makeinfo can be more easily found, notably below
    http://www.gnu.org/manual/

It might be helpful to format a couple of documents both ways, so we can
compare directly.  E.g., the Hello manual (simple) and the Texinfo
manual (complex).


Thanks,
Karl