renato arruda
2005-08-19 13:27:11 UTC
Hi,
I guess i should apologize for the mess i probably ended up making in the
documentation project. But here is my side of the story.
A while ago i needed some documentation that was better formatted than what
was available from the website and i felt it needed to be updated. The
documentation project looked kinda dead back then, so i decided to do some
work because then i had a personal need for it.
Since the format that the HTML pages followed were very similar to LaTeX
and i already knew LaTeX, for me it seemed like an obvious choice to write a
parser that would convert the HTML to latex and live with that. Now if you
say that LaTeX isnt the best tool for the job, then i will have to agree.
But at the time i didnt have the time to learn a new tool and then write
parsers to convert the existing documentation to it. LaTeX seemed ok because
it could generate both HTML and PDF for the manuals (never really thought
too much about the man page to be honest). I never thought that LaTeX would
be a final solution, but that once i got all the manual converted to latex
(which i never did), I could write another parser to some other format like
docbook (or whatever it would be felt to be the most appropriate solution).
I dont intend to start a flame war over a format either, but for an
official documentation format Esther should be the most adequate person to
make the call, imho. And in my opinion a single source for all the
documentation is a must. IŽve been away from the community for a while for
personal reasons, but now i should have a few hours here and there to work
on the project helping out on whatŽs needed.
IŽm sorry if i have ended up causing disburbances on the community, I
_never_ intended for that to happen. At the time i just wanted something
that would work better for me, and if it would help others, then it would
all good too.
-Renato
I guess i should apologize for the mess i probably ended up making in the
documentation project. But here is my side of the story.
A while ago i needed some documentation that was better formatted than what
was available from the website and i felt it needed to be updated. The
documentation project looked kinda dead back then, so i decided to do some
work because then i had a personal need for it.
Since the format that the HTML pages followed were very similar to LaTeX
and i already knew LaTeX, for me it seemed like an obvious choice to write a
parser that would convert the HTML to latex and live with that. Now if you
say that LaTeX isnt the best tool for the job, then i will have to agree.
But at the time i didnt have the time to learn a new tool and then write
parsers to convert the existing documentation to it. LaTeX seemed ok because
it could generate both HTML and PDF for the manuals (never really thought
too much about the man page to be honest). I never thought that LaTeX would
be a final solution, but that once i got all the manual converted to latex
(which i never did), I could write another parser to some other format like
docbook (or whatever it would be felt to be the most appropriate solution).
I dont intend to start a flame war over a format either, but for an
official documentation format Esther should be the most adequate person to
make the call, imho. And in my opinion a single source for all the
documentation is a must. IŽve been away from the community for a while for
personal reasons, but now i should have a few hours here and there to work
on the project helping out on whatŽs needed.
IŽm sorry if i have ended up causing disburbances on the community, I
_never_ intended for that to happen. At the time i just wanted something
that would work better for me, and if it would help others, then it would
all good too.
-Renato