Sender: crough45 AT amc DOT de
Message-Id: <97Aug18.155011gmt+0100.17231@internet01.amc.de>
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 14:55:03 +0100
From: Chris Croughton <crough45 AT amc DOT de>
Mime-Version: 1.0
To: eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il
Cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Info (was The DJGPP Oracle)
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Eli Zaretskii wrote, re Info:

> I have heard this a couple of times, but I never really understood
> this, because I had no problems using Info when I first encountered
> it.  Could you please explain what is it in Info that makes it so
> frustrating to learn?  Is it just a different user interface (can't do
> much about that) or something else?  Could it be that some crucial
> hint as to how get started with Info is missing from the README or
> should be put into the opening screen of the program?

For me it's not "getting started".  A large part of the annoyance
is indeed the user interface - it's a load of obscure keys, half of
which don't do anything like what I expect (the one which is the 
biggest use is 'q', to get out of the thing).  And searching it is
a pain - with man|less I just do / and then the RE to search for,
and it searches the whole thing.

The other real pain I notice is the command-line interface.  With man
I just type 

  $ man strcpy

and it finds it (occasionally I have to specify the section, as a
single digit after 'man'), with info it's some arcane set of flags.

Generally, if I see info files I run them through awk to convert 
them to plain text, then I can put them in the catman directory so
man can just treat them as text.  OK, no highlighting but it's 
better than info.  Sometime I'll enhance the script to convert them
to proper nroff format...

(Note: I generally am not a fan of hyperlinked databases.  They are
sometimes useful, but the lack of global search, and having to follow
links instead of just paging down, and the difficulty of printing them
as a whole, make them not 'friendly' as far as I'm concerned.  If you
want hyperlinked help, use Win95 or a Mac...)

(Sorry, Eli, but I use vi (in fact vim) in preference to emacs.  I no
longer even have the emacs server running on my work machine, it's 
been several months since I last used emacs at all.  Since vim 
compiles and runs fine on the PC as well (and provides all of the 
features I want, like syntax highlighting and macros) I can have a
common environment without taking up half a disk...)

Chris C