Re: alternative "info" reader (was: kernel makeoptions)

[Thomas Dickey <dickey%his.com@localhost>]

On Sun, 27 Feb 2011, Chuck Swiger wrote:

> On Feb 27, 2011, at 8:59 AM, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> > > 2) All GNU software uses info as the primary means of documentation.
> >
> > ncurses is one exception.
>
>
> You'd certainly know better than I, but ncurses seems to be a hybrid 
> like zlib, rather than something which originated as a GNU project. 
> While the GNU project hosts distfiles and probably provides mailing 
> lists and the like, ncurses and zlib are MIT-licensed (or MIT variants 
> if you prefer).

From what I recall, most GNU projects started without GNU's input, and
were "acquired".  ncurses' relationship to GNU is the result of an 
armistice with ESR...

>  http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.faq.html#is_it_gpl
>
> And, of course, you're non-compliant with the info/texinfo decree.  :-)

yes (in a previous discussion I agreed to use info if someone found a 
usable converter which could produce manpages that wouldn't lose 
information - no takers so far, no converters in either direction).

For cindent, I produced a "manpage" from the info file, but that's only a 
good reminder of how deficient the available tools are.

> > It's odd, but there appears to be no good conversion program between info and 
> > manpages (nor the reverse ;-), while there are conversions for both to html...
>
> HTML is a decent output format, but it would be no fun to try and 
> process it back to a source format.

I'm doing that for vile's plain-text documentation (from late 2009).  Not 
the manpage, though. manpages are harder, since readers do have some 
expectations...

Thinking about it, there's little evidence that either info or manpages 
are superior to each other, while the ability to translate to html seems 
to imply that html is at least more malleable.

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net