Re: [opensuse] religion of info (was: Bash script problem regarding with some math)

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The Wednesday 2007-12-12 at 22:59 -0500, François Pinard wrote:

I'm surprised when people say that it is a nightmare to read Info format documentation, as it is really a very simple thing to do, for anyone with any small drop of good will. Nightmares, I would better understand for those having had a bad life and consequently, agitated sleep :-).

But I'm kidding a bit, and know that some people who cannot stand Info are mouse addicts, while "info" requires the keyboard. For those who do not know, the keyboard is that big huge mouse next to the usual one, absolutely full of buttons, and which does not slide very well! :-)

I don't think it is a nightmare, but I do find its keyboard interface awkward. I came to expect programs using the cursor to navigate, enter to select... etc. Ie, I expect it to behave like "pinfo".

Sometimes info, or rather, pinfo, doesn't select the page I expect, but another; and I simply do not know how to tell it to search again. I'm trying to remember an example, but can't find it... but there is one that when I want, I get instead a "yes no something" page instead.


The simple truth is that Info never succeeded at taking over man pages in Linux. It would have been a good thing: Info is a superior documentation format in many ways. But life is that the amount of existing man pages is overwhelming, so all in all, and as sad as it is,
Info is not practical, even if it would have been better.

Sometimes I do not like to browse: I prefer an expanded view with all in a single page, to read it from start to end. That is not selectable. Browse mode is better when you already know something and want to view a small part. But I hate when I have to navigate several subnodes to find the exact part I'm looking for, in trial and error browse mode. I then prefer the man page, if it exists, because a simple search finds it - if I remember an string, of course.

I think that info pages are not bad, it's a good idea, that could benefit from a reviewed interface.


And, as a translator, I simply have no idea how to translate info pages. I do not have to understand tags and things. I translate text. The fact is that not even "info info" is translated! (to Spanish). That is significative of the difficulty. There is no GUI program to easily edit/translate info pages. Something like LyX, for instance.

For instance, "man man" is translated to Spanish... not that many pages are translated, only a few, and many are obsolete. But info pages? I don't know of any.

Even man pages are difficult to translate... do you know what I do? I edit them directly with mcedit, which has syntax coloring.

Program translation have the gettext utilities, and programs like poedit or kbabel to facilitate things. Info? Man? None.


That's a complete failure, IMO.

- -- Cheers,
Carlos E. R.

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