[Pinfo-devel] Info documentation viewers [was: Common source for man page and info document?]

[Julian Foad]

Bob Proulx wrote:
> Julian Foad wrote:
> 
>>(I could probably grow to like the "info" format if the basic GNU
>>"info" viewer program wasn't so primitive and clunky.
> 
> Hmm...  I actually like the info documentation quite a bit.  And I
> find the 'info' program easy to use.  (shrug)

> Have you tried 'pinfo'[1]?  If you are a 'vi' user then the keystrokes
> may be more intuitive than the ones for the 'info' program.

I hadn't tried it, but have just now.  Are you involved with it?  I can't see 
any discussion on its dev mailing list (other than translation into foreign 
languages) or any issues in its issue trackers.  Is it worth me posting these 
comments and bug reports to the list or the tracker?  Well, I'll see - I'm 
copying this to that list.

Just highlighting the links, and displaying man pages with highlighting, make 
it a lot more friendly.

I wish it wouldn't put two colons after menu entries.  That smacks of 
displaying the raw source, and is one of the things that made the old "info" 
program look ugly.

I found a few keystrokes by trial and error: UP, DOWN, ENTER, /, Q, and a 
couple of others.  I was unable to find help on keystrokes: none of "h", "?", 
":help" worked.  I didn't find a way to return to the page I'd last been 
viewing: neither vim's "^O" or "^^", nor the old "info" program's "L" (which 
has a new meaning) did it.

When invoked like this:

> ~/src/grep> ../pinfo-0.6.8/src/pinfo -f doc/grep.info

when visiting a node other than the top, pressing "h" results in:

> File not found. Press any key...
> Unexpected error.
> ~/src/grep>

- Julian