Matias Capeletto wrote:
> On 6/9/07, Rene Rivera <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
>> The big warning about the docs, as they are presented on the beta web
>> site: They override, disregard, and literally throw away the style
>> information in the source docs.
> 
> I do not understand the rationale of adding another conversion tool to
> the docs building chain.

Simple:

* It allows the web site to set a consistent style, consistent to the 
web site that is.

* It allows the web site to add interactive elements to the docs. The 
Google search is one example. Another we've wanted for some time is a 
fine grained commenting/notes system directly on the docs (like this 
<http://www.jackslocum.com/blog/2007/04/03/ext-js-launches/>).

* It cleans up the docbook html. For example to do things like fix the 
paths to work within the web site structure. And to generally make it 
possible to use CSS for styling instead of the HTML+CSS combo docbook uses.

> If we get every bit of boost docs into xml (by means of quickbook just
> for the sake of simplicity) 

That's a big if.

> why we need another processing step?

See above :-)

> I have learned xslt last week and I have to say that I am very impress
> by the power it has.

Ouch. I'll leave that discussion for some other time.

>> How that happens is that the ZIP
>> archives for all the release are put on the web server. The doc section
> 
> This step is good now because we have docs in html that look differently.
> IMO, once we get docs into qbk, this additional step will only add
> extra complexity.
> 
> qbk ---[ quicbook ]--> xml --[ boostbook ]--> html --[ new procesor ]--> html

That last one is actually XHTML. But it would be ideal if the boostbook 
output XHTML instead of HTML. Just too many "bugs" in browsers for 
rendering HTML.

> AFIKS every thing we will be doing in the new processor, can be
> integrated into boostbook.

Possibly... But it would not handle the case of changing the style of 
the web site at some future point, without having to regenerate all the 
docs for all the previous Boost releases. Which is not possible, since 
they are /fixed/ releases.

>> The content of the header, i.e. the search box, will not be available on
>> the web site.
> 
> :(

I should have been more specific. It's not going to be available in the 
header. It can be present some place else.

> This is exactly the point! Boostbook is a great tool...
> For me our problem is how to make html based docs look as our
> boostbook docs. Your processor may be very, very useful. While we are

My processor would be way simpler, if the boostbook docs did not use 
html for styling. Basically my processor cleans up the terrible html the 
docbook xslt transforms generate.

> 100% agree with you, but I do can not see why we can not modified
> boostbook to generate this kind of docs.

See comment above about backward compatibility.

> We should aim at simplicity, and IMHO adding an extra step is a step backward.

Sure. And the point of separating the web site is to remove the 
responsibility of how the docs get presented on the web site from the 
library authors. Which simplifies the Boost release procedure. This 
might be a different simplicity than you have in mind though.

> In the end we are all working to make boost a better place, both for
> users and for developers.

Sure.

> The new beta.boost.org is a great step
> forward! a really big one (thanks Rene for all the hard work there),

Thanks. It's good to know it was worth the pain of accounting for all 
the feed back.

> but I think that the proposed docs building chain is not going to work
> well for us.

There's no proposal. The only proposal we are really talking about is 
doc style. How the docs acquire that style is irrelevant.


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