Mail Archives: djgpp/1994/03/23/11:29:03
> I hear this criticism a lot. I'm not a big fan of GNU's Info, but I
> don't see how one can escape being forced to choose which features
> your full-text help system will support. That means that you can't
> have everything. Is there an alternative that allows creation of both
> typeset and ascii documents from the same source, using freely
> available tools; has a free, portable reader that works from any
> terminal; supports non-linear documents (linked subjects); and
> full-text, regular-expression searching?
No. But none of that is important to me. For programming information,
I find dumping ascii output to the printer to be more than adequate.
With a hierarchical menu structure, I find that I can normally locate
something very quickly if I don't already know what it is I am looking
for. As for free, I've written my own tools :) but they're not portable.
Because I don't need them to be. On unix, I'd just install the stuff as
man pages. For DOS, I wrote my own clone of man.
> I think these are the correct priorities for a help system with GNU's
> scope. It's too bad the limitations make it less pleasant and less
> accessible to most users, as you pointed out.
:) At the end of the day, its a matter of preference. All credit should
be given to the FSF, for providing *something*. That's better than nothing
at all. What I am saying is that what they've provided doesn't address
*my* needs. (This isn't meant to be a flame war :)
Stuart
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