Re: Better Help Docs Searching?

[Zach Riggle <zachriggle@gmail.com>]

Thanks for all of the info (pun intended!), guys.

I've never intentionally used the "info" command, only used it
accidentally when I didn't import my zsh logging library (which
defines debug/info/warn/err/die etc for use in my various scripts).

## Using Info
When I invoke "info zsh" on my system (macOS 12) I do get some output.
However when I hit shift-i, the status line at the bottom states "No
indices found."

Invoking manually doesn't work either, so I think there's something
broken about the default install of Zsh on macOS (though I *also* have
it installed via homebrew).

    $ info --index-search=read zsh
    no index entries found for `read'

The "g" command works to jump between commands (e.g. "g read" takes me
to the equivalent of read(2) man pages).

I get "No indices found" for "info read" as well.  :(

## Building Info from Source
It seems that I'm doing this incorrectly.  I inspected the Makefile
and there is *definitely* an "info" target, but Make doesn't seem to
like it.  I tried both with the OS-provided GNU Make (3.81), and also
with Homebrew installed GNU Make (4.3).

   $ make info
    make: *** No rule to make target `info'.  Stop.

There is definitely an "info" target.

    $ grep -E '\binfo\b' Makefile.in | head -1
    dvi ps html info pdf:

Even trying to make it manually doesn't work

    $ make -C Doc -f Makefile.in info
    Makefile.in:30: *** missing separator.  Stop.

## Other Info Curiosities
One thing that I really like / prefer about man pages is the $MANPAGER
variable, which I have configured to use bat(3) [1] as my pager, which
gives syntax highlighting, highlights command names, and flag names.
Is there an equivalent for "info" pages?

Here's a few examples:
* sh: https://i.imgur.com/rGjQo9v.png
* bash: https://i.imgur.com/ymnDh5V.png
* git: https://i.imgur.com/ABqbZmE.png

[1]: export MANPAGER="sh -c 'col -bx | bat -l man -p'"
    (See https://github.com/sharkdp/bat#man.  The entire "bat" project
is truly amazing.)

Zach Riggle

On Sun, Aug 1, 2021 at 3:11 PM Ray Andrews <rayandrews@eastlink.ca> wrote:
>
> On 2021-08-01 11:52 a.m., Bart Schaefer wrote:
> > On Sun, Aug 1, 2021 at 9:33 AM Stephane Chazelas <stephane@chazelas.org> wrote:
> >> It's really astonishing that so few people know about it after
> >> so many decades it's been around.
> Little tidbits like you guys have just coughed up would have saved God
> knows how much frustration here.  There's always a solution, but finding
> it might not be so easy.
> > GNU made a push some years ago to try to move everything from "man" to
> > "info", but it never really took hold.
> Strange, isn't it?  Something in the culture sticks to the trusted
> tradition even when a clear improvement is available.  Seems to be a
> Linux/Unix wide thing.  I still remember my first successful install of
> Linux.  Bash without even command recall and no DELETE key, and one was
> expected to either already know emacs or to use the nano editor.  DOS
> seemed advanced by comparison.  Even zsh, one might think there's be
> some default to user friendly setup out of the box but that's not the
> way.  Anyway not to whine -- thanks for the 'info' tips.
>
> >
>
>