On 7/18/06, Jaime E. Villate <villate at gnu.org> wrote:
> > The topic strings are keys for a hash table in which the
> > associated value tells what info file to read, the byte offset
> > of the item, and the length in bytes. Then retrieval is very fast.
> Doesn't info already do something similar?
Yes, it is similar, but dissimilar enough that it's less work
to simply ignore the info index and build a different one.
Info's index doesn't index individual functions and variables,
it does index chapters which aren't useful in the on-line help,
and byte offsets are computed by pretending all maxima.info-*
files are concatenated, so to load the text there is an extra step
of figuring out which file a byte offset actually refers to.
> It would be nice to be able to use more of the functionalities of
> the info format.
I'm not sure I want to replicate the info functionality.
After all, if info is what someone wants, they can just launch
info in a separate window. That said, category and/or keyword
searches could be useful. I have some ideas about user-
interface functionality but for the moment I am just trying to
rebuild the underlying stuff.
Robert