John Maddock wrote:
Paul A Bristow wrote:
How about beefing up our documentation tools? Make it easier to install configure and use, make it seamlessly generate nice PDF without the hassles of FOP (e.g. http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/examples.html), etc? Neat !
Before we get too carried away, there are still plenty of issues with DocBook to latex conversion: tables with code in them get particularly badly mangled as I recall. Ultimately every time you change formats you loose something :-(
Oh. And we have a lot of those.
But Quickbook seems to me to meet the needs of Boost-type stuff very nicely. (and once setup - the tricky bit - is virtually the same as Docbook etc).
Or does it need some work on it still?
We could really use someone to figure out all the installation stuff, document it, and write some Unix and windows installer scripts.
Rene already started a Windows installer script.
Except that the conversion to pdf didn't work using FOP (but as I recall, for problems with graphics being inefficient for graphics using bitmaps not vectors, and we didn't manage the equations in MathML rather than intrinsic problems?)
Basically FOP sucks. I'm sorry, but it's my opinion and I'm sticking to it! The interesting thing is the commercial alternative (RenderX) works very well, so clearly it can be done.
Sadly writing a complete docbook->pdf converter in three months sounds a bit ambitious - pity 'cos I bet a lot of projects besides Boost could use it.
Too ambitious, IMO.
And it doesn't produce an automatic INDEX, as well as a Table of Contents.
Modifying quickbook to take a concordance file and produce propper docbook indexes shouldn't be too hard? Then we just need to rely on the docbook toolchains doing something meaningful with the data...
Not hard. I know what to do. It's just a matter of doing it.
So how can we produce a GSoC project out of this?
So... installation scripts, documentation, and index generation. Is that enough to be a project? Oh wait we could at IDE integration as well, and let's not forget that Matias got started on some of this last year: http://cablemodem.fibertel.com.ar/mcape/oss/projects/mc_projects/boost_proje..., looks like not much has been started but the logos and code name are nice anyway :-)
..Also, make it usable for non-boost documentation. It's a generally useful tool. Address the qualms of Dave A :) Have the toolset hook (optionally) to python (to take advantage of Dave's work on LiTre). Use regex for the syntax highlighter (so we can plug in highilghers for other languages). I can come up with a list of things needed to be done. Regards, -- Joel de Guzman http://www.boost-consulting.com http://spirit.sf.net