Re: Latest texi/info to www

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Harry Putnam <address@hidden>
> Date: 18 Jul 2001 10:10:18 -0700
> 
> It hadn't occured to me that information would be lost in the
> process. So I guess that could be a big stumbling block.  What kind of
> things end up missing?

I will have hard time explaining that since you say don't know
Texinfo.  Did you ever see a printed manual?  If you did, you know
that meta-syntactic variables are typeset in a special cursive font,
commands typed by the user in a slanted font, etc.  In Info, many of
these attributes are lost or changed in a way that makes it impossible
to reconstruct for HTML display

> Do you mean someting like the Notes, cross refs
> and so on?  Can you give a simple example of what it would mean in a
> web browser?

When HTML is produced from Texinfo, the HTML markup is made similar
to what you get in the printed manual.  Info cannot support some of
these attributes, so they produce no effect in Info.  Thus, HTML
produced from Info will lack some of the markup.

> > No, AFAIK, this feature was never considered for inclusion, or even 
> > discussed.
> 
> Is that because of the information loss you cite, or are there other
> things that make it a bad idea?

I think it was simply because no one raised the issue, at least IIRC.