Comment by patrec

A manpage is a glorified README. An info page is a non-horrendous version of a html manual. So to see the appeal, don't compare `man cp` with `info cp`, try some more substantial manual like the emacs manual or python's documentation. Also, emacs is a much better info reader than the standalone program.

Info pages are at least an order of magnitude more efficient to navigate than the html documentation that has supplanted them. All the following are fast and a single keypress:

- regexp (s)earch (not just the current page, the whole document)

- hierarchical navigation ((u)p, (n)ext, (p)revious)

- jump to any (i)ndex topic

- jump between links/sections (by position: tab, shift-tab, by na(m)e)

The main shortcoming of info is no support for styling (or graphics) whatsoever, but if you're used to its efficiency using a mix of googling and clicking to navigate the html equivalent is profoundly frustrating.

The closest modern equivalent I know of is Dash.