changed README to markdown for better readability

[Pinjontall94]

I modified the README as little as possible to get headings and subheadings to render better with markdown defaults on most git forges. Would this work, or should there still be a raw README file? Maybe README symlinked to the .md version? I figure since GNUstep is moving over to github, this sort of thing (improving doc rendering) is on the table

[rfm]

I think there are a few problems here.

The simple technical issue that README is generated from readme.texi automatically in each release, so edit to README would just be lost.

The fact that README is meant to be a text file people can read when they get the package, without having to have any extra software, so adding markdown to it makes it LESS readable.

The techinfo format is much richer/better than markdown for generating documentation, but is even worse than markdown for reading directly, which is why the plain text generated from it is distributed as part of the package.

However, I understand that the html you see when visiting the github site looks better than the plain text: so I guess the aim here is to get github to produce nicer output when viewing the project than it does when it automatically looks at README.

Perhaps the best approach is to look into what github can do. For instance, if it can automatically display an html page in preference to README, we could add a github specific page to the project for it?

[Pinjontall94]

I think there are a few problems here.

The simple technical issue that README is generated from readme.texi automatically in each release, so edit to README would just be lost.

The fact that README is meant to be a text file people can read when they get the package, without having to have any extra software, so adding markdown to it makes it LESS readable.

The techinfo format is much richer/better than markdown for generating documentation, but is even worse than markdown for reading directly, which is why the plain text generated from it is distributed as part of the package.

However, I understand that the html you see when visiting the github site looks better than the plain text: so I guess the aim here is to get github to produce nicer output when viewing the project than it does when it automatically looks at README.

Perhaps the best approach is to look into what github can do. For instance, if it can automatically display an html page in preference to README, we could add a github specific page to the project for it?

I think there are a few problems here.

The simple technical issue that README is generated from readme.texi automatically in each release, so edit to README would just be lost.

The fact that README is meant to be a text file people can read when they get the package, without having to have any extra software, so adding markdown to it makes it LESS readable.

The techinfo format is much richer/better than markdown for generating documentation, but is even worse than markdown for reading directly, which is why the plain text generated from it is distributed as part of the package.

However, I understand that the html you see when visiting the github site looks better than the plain text: so I guess the aim here is to get github to produce nicer output when viewing the project than it does when it automatically looks at README.

Perhaps the best approach is to look into what github can do. For instance, if it can automatically display an html page in preference to README, we could add a github specific page to the project for it?

Ahh, see I wondered if that was the case. Hmm, the changes I made were pretty regular and minimal (i.e. maybe something that could be set up with a GH action that calls sed on the texi-generated README?)