This was also discussed at OSGeo Edu and I am so far sticking with LaTeX for the lecture notes and the GRASSbook is written in Latex too. I am not sure about its suitability for manpages - many people are scared of its complexity although there is an easy to use text editor for it (see below) and I don't find it complex at all, as long as Markus does the layout and formatting :)
Helena http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/edu_discuss/2008-January/000682.html http://www.lyx.org On Tue, 2008-02-26 at 20:14 +0100, Jachym Cepicky wrote: > Hi, > > I do not know, if anybody already excluded LaTeX for better > documentation output, but this format has it's potential as well... > > > Jachym > > Helena Mitasova píše v Út 26. 02. 2008 v 12:54 -0500: > > DocBook has been considered for OSGeo edu material so there has been > > quite a bit of discussion on that - this is what Frank had to say: > > > > On the whole DocBook issue - we tried using DocBook for a while for > > MapServer > > docs and ended up abandoning it because installing and getting to understand > > DocBook tools was too hard for many potential contributors. It also turned > > out to be a clumsy format to work in. Perhaps things have improved, or > > we mapserverites were particularly dumb - but take that at least as a mild > > cautionary tale. We ended up with documents written in html, and > > restructured > > text in plone though we aren't so thrilled with that either. There is > > some consideration being given to just moving to a Trac wiki (though Trac > > wiki is particular weak as a wiki in my opinion). > > > > here is the discussion: > > http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/edu_discuss/2008-January/thread.html > > > > I tried DocBook and you just have to learn and get used to a new thing > > and it has its own complexities and I am not sure it is worth it. > > > > And BTW I am one those people who find having the old fashioned man pages > > on hand useful - I work a lot from home and it was much faster to view > > the simwe man pages that I was modifying using the old format than waiting > > for them to pop-up in remotely run web browser or move them around. > > I would also like to suggest keeping the man pages simple and easy to > > maintain, > > the more complex it gets, the fewer people will be able to maintain it and > > the more complex the task will become. > > > > Helena > > > > > > On Tue, 2008-02-26 at 09:31 -0800, Dylan Beaudette wrote: > > > On Monday 25 February 2008, Glynn Clements wrote: > > > > Dylan Beaudette wrote: > > > > > I wonder if now would be a good time to investgate the use of CSS in > > > > > the > > > > > man pages. If we define a couple types of "container" objects (<div>, > > > > > <span>, etc) we can use a single style file to later manipulate the > > > > > look > > > > > and feel of the manual pages. > > > > > > > > If you're going to overhaul the documentation, I suggest going all the > > > > way and using something which is intended to be used as a source for > > > > multiple formats (at least HTML and nroff, with one or more of TeX, > > > > PDF and PostScript as options), e.g. DocBook. > > > > > > Right-- this was the thought, although block-level CSS seemed like a > > > middle > > > ground. > > > > > > I am not familiar with DocBook, but here is a good start: > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook > > > > > > There is a Debian package called 'docbook-defguide' which looks like it > > > contains much good information, saved (on my system) here: > > > /usr/share/doc/docbook-defguide/html/docbook.html > > > > > > It would be nice to have the option of converting the base manual into > > > one's > > > favorite format: Man pages, HTML, LateX, PDF, etc. > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > grass-dev mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev _______________________________________________ grass-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
