Hello.
Sorry for the delay.
>> The problem with "info" is that it's not as easy to use as man pages
>> are.
>
> Why not? What features are missing that will make it ``as easy as a
> man page''?
Maybe that's just an issue of personal taste or just that I'm more
accustomed to man pages, but I don't like the tree structure in a
reference manual. I much prefer a linear file. So I use info to learn
new things and man to solve quick problems.
> Please explain why Less is faster in browsing than Info.
Because you can jump around in the whole file. I confess sometimes I
ran less on the info files as well, to skip the tree structure.
> Sorry, I don't understand this comment. Why is it important that Less
> is used for browsing source code as well?
Because it's the tool everybody uses in daily work. I think "--vi-keys"
may help, though.
> Perhaps you should try the index-searching command in Info (press
> `i'). I find it invaluable when using an Info manual as a reference.
That's true, I use it a lot as well. However creating a good index
requires a lot of resources, and I expect most documents to not have a
good index. My documents don't have one, for example, as I have no
time to invest in that issue. Sure that's a fault of mine, but it feel
it's a typical fault of programmers: the time available to write
documentation is much less than the time available for coding, and
meta-information (like the index) is not trivial to create.
I don't remember when I ran less on the info files, but it surely was
one of the times I found the index not good enough.
> The intent is to add features people miss so that Info gets better
> to the point where it could be the single source of usage
> information.
Maybe the feature I miss is a way to look at a whole document at once.
For example, I *hate* html documents split in dozens of pieces, and I
usually find myself concatenating them together and piping to less.
Maybe this need (having all of the information at once when using it
as a reference) is a peculiarity of mine, but maybe it's something
other people need as well.
Thanks for your patience
/alessandro
