RE: Texinfo XML support in Emacs Info browser

[Drew Adams]

> Using XML structures from xml-parse-file is very different
> approach from using text-based Info files and poses many
> interesting problems. For example, how to search manuals
> for a regexp.  One solution is to traverse the XML tree
> and to match its text elements.  But what to do with text split
> between different XML elements?  Another solution is to
> search a regexp in the rendered text of all nodes.

Search is specific to the medium at hand. So, yes, it would be appropriate
to search the _rendered_ text, however it might be rendered. For example,
for PDF output, a PDF reader's search function could be quite different from
Info's. Likewise, for XHTML, a browser's search could be different from
Info's.

I doubt there would be much call for searching the underlying XML, but, if
there were, then XQuery or XPath expressions would be appropriate. I see no
sense in trying to regexp search across XML nodes, with the possible
exception of searching only the text() nodes (as you mentioned).