Re: info info; man info (documentation about info)

[Gavin Smith]

On Sat, Jan 07, 2023 at 11:40:29PM +0000, Gavin Smith wrote:
> > This documentation describes the stand-alone Info reader which you can
> > use to read Info documentation.
> > 
> >    If you are new to the Info reader, then you can get started by typing
> > 'H' for a list of basic key bindings.  You can read through the rest of
> > this manual by typing <SPC> and <DEL> (or <Space> and <Backspace>) to
> > move forwards and backwards in it.
> > ]
> > 
> > 
> > However, help that explains how to navigate is of little help if I first
> > don't know how documentation is organized.  In a manual page, it is simple:
> > documentation for something is in a single page.  In Texinfo, there is a
> > nodes a dir, a pointer, a file, a tree, ...  and I don't know what they
> > mean.
> 
> We could try to streamline the documentation in info-stnd.info so
> that repeatedly pressing the space bar gets you the information you
> need as soon as possible, without having to read past all the command-line
> options.  We could move the "Selecting a Node" section earlier.

I've made a few changes to info-stnd.texi, mainly in reordering sections.
Hopefully this is an improvement.

I haven't added any ASCII art showing the document tree and the directions
of Up, Next and Prev, but maybe this could be added.  If there is important
missing context, that could be added too.

I have often found public discussions of documentation nonplussing.  Often
people don't convince each other, as there is no clear right answer.

I'm already feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the volume of mail on related
topics and knowing which mail to respond to.

What I'd like to avoid is making the documentation worse, which could
happen following a discussion where somebody suggests "just adding a
note" somewhere.  If this is done apparently successfully several times,
the documentation comes to be an incoherent mess crowded with detail.
Hence the global view should be taken not just the local view.