On November 6, 2002 10:27 am, Martin Wilck wrote:
- Keep old behavior as default, using new config option to change.
Can you also please update the documentation as well (man pages, etc.)?
Am Mit, 2002-11-06 um 16.43 schrieb Dimitrie O. Paun:
Can you also please update the documentation as well (man pages, etc.)?
Ok. Btw is there any specific reason why the man pages have not been converted to Docbook yet? I really dislike hand-editing troff.
Martin
On November 6, 2002 11:55 am, Martin Wilck wrote:
Ok. Btw is there any specific reason why the man pages have not been converted to Docbook yet? I really dislike hand-editing troff.
I had a similar reaction (never touched troff before), but you're better off than trying to install the docbook tools :) I guess that nobody did it (you have to set up the .sgml -> troff conversion as well).
Am Mit, 2002-11-06 um 18.19 schrieb Dimitrie O. Paun:
I had a similar reaction (never touched troff before), but you're better off than trying to install the docbook tools :) I guess that nobody did it (you have to set up the .sgml -> troff conversion as well).
That's a no-brainer, really, since docbook tools need to be present anyway. "docbook2man" is the tool of choice. All recent Linux distributions come with docbook.
The converted man pages could be part of CVS (as some other autogenerated files are) so that users wouldn't be required to have docbook in order to generate the manual pages.
The benefit would be that the man pages would be ready for PS/PDF/HTML conversion, and could go into e.g. an appendix of the wine docs.
Martin
On November 6, 2002 12:40 pm, Martin Wilck wrote:
The converted man pages could be part of CVS (as some other autogenerated files are) so that users wouldn't be required to have docbook in order to generate the manual pages.
We have to have the troff stuff in CVS, we can't require users to have docbook tools installed. This is just like configure.
Bottom line, I think it's a good idea. I personally have no love for troff, so if you feel like doing it... :)
"Dimitrie O. Paun" dpaun@rogers.com writes:
We have to have the troff stuff in CVS, we can't require users to have docbook tools installed. This is just like configure.
Bottom line, I think it's a good idea. I personally have no love for troff, so if you feel like doing it... :)
Well, I personally have no love for SGML, and I think the man pages are just fine in troff.
Am Mit, 2002-11-06 um 22.11 schrieb Alexandre Julliard:
Well, I personally have no love for SGML, and I think the man pages are just fine in troff.
If you don't like SGML, why is it the docs are SGML ?
If we'd convert those few man pages, we'd have more flexibility (ability to combine docs & manpages in a single format) and less danger of the docs & man pages becoming inconsistent, it'd be easy to have a "wine man pages" section in the WWW docs, etc.
Not that I really care a lot though. I can edit troff if it's necessary.
Martin
Martin Wilck Martin.Wilck@Fujitsu-Siemens.com writes:
If you don't like SGML, why is it the docs are SGML ?
Because I'm not the one writing the docs, and the people who write them prefer to do it in SGML. I do update the man pages from time to time, and I think troff is better for that; so if you want to convert them to SGML, fine, but you also have to volunteer to keep them up to date because I won't do it anymore.
On November 7, 2002 11:31 am, Alexandre Julliard wrote:
I do update the man pages from time to time, and I think troff is better for that;
I don't mean to argue (this is a subjective opinion), but I am curious (knowing that you typically have valid reasoning behind your opinions :)) why you would think troff 'is better'. It's maybe simpler in the sense that it does not require new tools, etc., but better as a markup language?
"Dimitrie O. Paun" dpaun@rogers.com writes:
I don't mean to argue (this is a subjective opinion), but I am curious (knowing that you typically have valid reasoning behind your opinions :)) why you would think troff 'is better'. It's maybe simpler in the sense that it does not require new tools, etc., but better as a markup language?
Clearly the tools are an advantage, but I also think the markup syntax is better. Troff is not really that good, texinfo is better IMO; but with both you have a reasonable chance to read the document in source format, by simply skipping over some markup bits here and there. With SGML the markup is so intrusive that I find it impossible to skip over it and read the text, especially since the markup itself looks like text instead of looking like line noise.
On November 7, 2002 12:23 pm, Alexandre Julliard wrote:
Clearly the tools are an advantage, but I also think the markup syntax is better. Troff is not really that good, texinfo is better IMO; but with both you have a reasonable chance to read the document in source format, by simply skipping over some markup bits here and there. With SGML the markup is so intrusive that I find it impossible to skip over it and read the text, especially since the markup itself looks like text instead of looking like line noise.
An interesting point, I agree. But we are stuck with a lot of bad/broken standards, and SGML/XML is not the worse of the lot. Thing is, troff is a dying art, and it is very scary for the uninitiated. Texinfo is better, I agree, but it's really a nice thing, and it's not doing much better than troff (in terms of surviving).
As for the almost-content nature of the SGML markup, I am 100% with you. I find it very difficult to work on it, plain text. But if your editor supports syntax highlighting (and most do, nowadays), it can alleviate this problem quite significantly.
I just think that long term, sticking to troff, we're just raising the bar to entry. Oh well, I guess if you maintain it, it does not matter.
On November 7, 2002 12:58 pm, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
I agree, but it's really a nice thing, and it's not doing much better than
*Sigh* s/nice/niche/
Could you give the name of a SGML editor & viewer that supports syntax highlighting ?
As for the almost-content nature of the SGML markup, I am 100% with you. I find it very difficult to work on it, plain text. But if your editor supports syntax highlighting (and most do, nowadays), it can alleviate this problem quite significantly.
___________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse @yahoo.fr gratuite et en français ! Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com
On November 7, 2002 01:24 pm, Sylvain Petreolle wrote:
Could you give the name of a SGML editor & viewer that supports syntax highlighting ?
vim emacs :)
On Wed, Nov 06, 2002 at 05:55:20PM +0100, Martin Wilck wrote:
Am Mit, 2002-11-06 um 16.43 schrieb Dimitrie O. Paun:
Can you also please update the documentation as well (man pages, etc.)?
Ok. Btw is there any specific reason why the man pages have not been converted to Docbook yet? I really dislike hand-editing troff.
Thank you very much for this offer to rewrite them in Docbook ! :)
-
Alexandre Julliard -
Andreas Mohr -
Dimitrie O. Paun -
Martin Wilck -
Sylvain Petreolle