on Wed, Dec 26, 2001 at 04:31:12PM +0100, Michael Mauch (michael.mauch@gmx.de) wrote:
> Karsten M. Self wrote:
>
> > on Tue, Dec 25, 2001 at 06:32:31PM -0800, Craig Dickson (crdic@yahoo.com) wrote:
> > > Carl Fink wrote:
> > >
> > > > BTW, for HTML docs, put them all in *one* file with hyperlinks.
> > > > There is no meaningful advantage to cutting it into twenty
> > > > pieces, and it makes searching significantly more difficult.
> > >
> > > For locally-stored docs that's arguable. The advantage of small
> > > files comes when you have to read it across a network, especially
> > > a WAN.
> >
> > I'd disagree. Info nodes can be _quit_ small -- a screen or less of
> > data. Load latency kills you more than the actual data transfer
> > interval. I'd rather have, say, 1/10 the interrupts, of roughly 2-4
> > times the duration, than to be interrupted with great frequency.
>
> Yes, but that's of course not a problem of the format; there are as
> well HTML pages with only 5 lines.
...but that's the entire man page. Not the case with the default info
presentation.
> > This can be further mitigated by browsers that render on partial
> > load, or which allow background loading of pages (Galeon rocks for
> > this).
>
> Sorry, I disagree. Try
>
> info --output=gcc.txt --subnodes gcc
>
> to put the whole gcc.info* files into one text file, then load it with
> Galeon. Although the file has only 30000 lines and it's text only,
> loading and viewing is slow even with Galeon.
I have 2929 lines, and a 2 second load time. What packages do you have
installed?
The likely suspects appear to be:
gcc-doc - Documentation for the GNU compilers (gcc, gobjc, g++).
gcc-3.0-doc - Documentation for the GNU compilers (gcc, gobjc, g++).
gcc-docs - Fake package used for a smooth upgrade.
gcc-2.95-doc - Documentation for the GNU compilers (gcc, gobjc, g++).
gcc272-docs - Documentation for the gcc compiler (gcc272).
> Or look at the PHP docs (e.g. from
> <http://www.php3.de/download-docs.php>). They have several formats (no
> info); one of them being a single HTML file (4.7 MB). Even when loaded
> from the local harddisk, this takes ages to load in Galeon.
> Same for the gawk.html, mysql.html and similar large files.
I don't have the PHP document handy. My experience is that mawk.html
loads in 13 seconds on first access, and in about 1.5 seconds on reload,
accessed under dwww, as:
http://ego/cgi-bin/dwww?type=man&location=/usr/share/man/man1/gawk.1.gz
http://ego/cgi-bin/dwww?type=man&location=/usr/share/man/man1/mawk.1.gz
What version of Galeon and/or hardware? This is on a PIII-600 laptop,
128 MiB, IDE harddrive.
> You might argue that I should use w3m
w3m's loading is likely to be as slow or slower -- it doesn't display a
page until it's fully loaded, unlike.
> or links
...which _does_ render a page _while_ it's loading.
> to read those large HTML files
...but in any case, both render the files in < 1 second. I suspect
caching is going on here. Trying another large page -- bash -- it loads
in about 2 seconds. This is comperable to wait times for a freshly
rendered manpage via groff.
> - but then I would have to remember the keystrokes of these programs
> (i.e. I can't use my favourite browser)
Incidental not: I'd recommend you learn _one_ text mode browser. For
times when you've got console-only access (no X11, or remote session, or
other reasons), they're a godsend. Not that you have to give up your
graphical browser (yes, Galeon rocks).
> and I have to install/build these programs on other machines ((X)Emacs
> is everywhere).
>
> > > When I want to search a directory of HTML files, I tend to grep it
> > > first, then view the files that seem to be apropos.
> >
> > One better:
> >
> > $ less $( grep -l 'pattern' filelist )
>
> And then you read the plain HTML source? Not very cool, frankly.
<pedantic>
$ for file in $( list ); do w3m $file; done
</pedantic>
> A local search engine like mnogosearch, htdig or glimpse could help,
> of course. Is there a Debian package with already set-up configuration
> for one of these? I seem to remember that FreeBSD has something like
> this (htdig-based and with man2html and info2html).
Try dwww.
> The german HTML tutorial SelfHTML 8.0 comes with a built-in JavaScript
> search engine (<http://selfhtml.teamone.de/>, but it seems to be down
> at the moment). It is very fast and works well. It looks like it's
> only available for SelfHTML at the moment, though.
I don't care for Javascript. It doesn't work in my text browsers, among
other issues, and generally fucks up my browsing in general use. The
latest Moz build allows site-specific Java/Javascript enabling /
disabling. I'm waiting for this to hit Galeon.
> I think a decent search facility is a must for more in-depth
> documentation. If I _know_ that I want to use newwin(3), I can easily
> type "man newwin". But if I just want to get started with curses, I am
> really lost after "man -k curses". A hierarchical "book" (be it in
> HTML or in info format) with a "Getting started" topic is a lot more
> user-friendly in such cases.
Most man pages have a "SEE ALSO" section. Accessing these through dwww
links to the related manpages, access via 'man' is left as an exercise
to the reader.
Peace.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
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