LWN has a great article on esr’s proposal to revamp Emacs documentation that I wrote about previously. If you’ve been following that debate, you should definitely give it a read.
I made a serendipitous discovery in the comments. In response to a question about the utility of indices, drothlis notes that having an index allows you to type 【Ctrl+h S】 and pop right to the documentation for the symbol at point.
The example he gives involves checking a makefile symbol having nothing to do with Emacs. It’s a great example of how flexible Emacs with Info is. Be sure to read his comment.
This comment also shows how important it is to make sure any replacement of texinfo and info preserve the indices and the ability to query them that we have now.