Hi Peter,
Thanks for your thoughts. I have wondered previously (in other projects) about the legitimacy of a distinction between manuals and command references. With a lot of effort, it can work -- but to make it work, duplication is inevitable. Manuals simply have to make references to commands, and I suspect that a 'comprehensive' user-friendly user manual is nothing but a comprehensive command reference, with the commands organised in a human way, with interspersed commentary, suggestions for use, and examples of usage. I'm in complete agreement, though, that however this is done, a VCS is necessary. (I'm plugging git as my favourite, but it's just the principle I'm arguing for here.) James On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 2:41 PM, Peter Münster <pmli...@free.fr> wrote: > Hello, > > These suggestions are a bit a reply to the thoughts of James Fisher. > > It would be nice, to have once in the future at least 2 up to date context > documentations: > > - a context user manual > For me, it's the merge of all scattered articles and manuals. Each chapter > treats a particular subject, such as "columns" or "footnotes". > It seems, that Taco is working on such a manual. > > - a context command reference manual > This is just the xml-database used by texshow. Each command should be > described in detail with every possible options. > On the one hand, texshow uses this database, on the other hand a well > structured command reference can be generated as pdf-file. > > Filling in all the details in both projects is a lot of work, so perhaps it > would be a good idea, to set up a system, that makes it easy for users to > contribute to these projects (patches) and easy for Taco and Hans to > acknowledge or reject those patches. > > This "system" would be nothing else as some vcs (git or svn for example) > with some commit-hooks, that manage the acknowledgement by Hans and Taco > (and perhaps others). > > The tex-files of the user-manual are already under version control, and the > xml-database is only the cont-en.xml file, that would need to be put under > version control too. > > So, perhaps with not too much effort, users can be easily invited to > contribute to the documentation projects and the quality can be assured > through the acknowledgements of the developers. > > Cheers, Peter > > -- > Contact information: http://pmrb.free.fr/contact/ > > > > ___________________________________________________________________________________ > If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to > the Wiki! > > maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / > http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context > webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net > archive : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ > wiki : http://contextgarden.net > > ___________________________________________________________________________________ >
___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________
