Re: Benefits of using Sphinx documentation format

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Richard Biener <richard.guenther@gmail.com>
> Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2021 08:24:17 +0200
> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>, "gcc@gcc.gnu.org" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> 
> I actually like texinfo (well, because I know it somewhat, compare to sphinx).
> I think it produces quite decent PDF manuals.  I never use the html
> output (in fact I read our manual using grep & vim in the original
> .texi form ...).

FTR, I almost exclusively use the (Emacs) Info reader to read the
manuals in Info format.  I never understood those who prefer reading
HTML-formatted docs in a Web browser.  The advanced features of Info:
the index-search with powerful completion built-in, seamless
cross-references between manuals, the ability to search all of the
manuals installed on my system and then browse the results, the
ability to have Emacs land me at the documentation of the symbol under
the cursor regardless of its language/package/library, no dependency
on connectivity, to mention just a few -- all those are tremendous
productivity boosters.  I rarely spend more than a few seconds to find
the piece of documentation I need (not including reading it, of
course).  (And yes, grep-style regexp search through the entire manual
is also available, although I only need to use it in rare and
exceptional circumstances.)

So I never understood people, let alone developers, who are willing to
throw such power out the window and use HTML.  I only do that when
there's a manual I don't have installed in the Info format (a rare
phenomenon) or some other similarly exceptional cases.  But I get it
that there are strange people who prefer HTML nonetheless.  More
importantly, the Texinfo developers understand that, and actively work
towards making the Texinfo HTML better, with some impressive progress
already there, see the latest release 6.8 of Texinfo (Gavin mentioned
some of the advances).