From owner-freebsd-doc Wed May 10 18:10:55 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk [193.237.89.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A9E6137BA7A; Wed, 10 May 2000 18:10:48 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from nik@nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk) Received: (from nik@localhost) by nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (8.9.3/8.9.3) id AAA89878; Thu, 11 May 2000 00:59:15 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from nik) Date: Thu, 11 May 2000 00:59:14 +0100 From: Nik Clayton To: jkoshy@FreeBSD.org Cc: Nik Clayton , doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Including images in the documentation Message-ID: <20000511005914.A85566@catkin.nothing-going-on.org> References: <20000509143555.A1692@kilt.nothing-going-on.org> <200005100942.CAA34333@freefall.freebsd.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0.1i In-Reply-To: <200005100942.CAA34333@freefall.freebsd.org>; from jkoshy@FreeBSD.org on Wed, May 10, 2000 at 02:42:51AM -0700 Organization: FreeBSD Project Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org [ Just to be absolutely certain this message gets across -- I don't know all the answers here. If I'm asking questions they're not rhetorical. ] On Wed, May 10, 2000 at 02:42:51AM -0700, jkoshy@FreeBSD.org wrote: > > vector images. Instead of storing EPS files in the repository we would > > store the dia files, and generate the EPS from them at build time. > > I have two objections to `dia': > > Size: `dia' requires GTK which in turn pulls in other dependencies; > ImageMagick is also big. Yep. I fully agree with you here. I know what it's like to be behind a slow link (33.6 modem until a week ago). This is exactly why I want alternatives. > I18N: How localized is `dia'? Will it serve the needs of the -doc > translation teams? Localized? Do you mean the application, or it's output? > Instead: > > Why not have EPS as the ``base format'' from which other formats are > generated as needed? Of the various choices, EPS seems to me today to > scale the best across the available display technologies. Further, it > is a fairly compact and, being plain text, works well with CVS. > You can translate EPS into a number formats using ghostscript > (including PNG). How well are bitmaps covered in EPS? I'm assuming we're going to want to be able to use bitmaps, such as screen grabs. I really don't know how well suited EPS is as a format for bitmaps. > Generating EPS: > > While visual tools like `dia' are a possibility, we also have: > > - MetaPost (already present in the teTeX distribution): a lightweight > tool for drawing simple diagrams of the kind we are likely to need. I've taken a cursory glance at MetaPost now (more specifically, mpman.ps in the doc/ directory). Hmm. I'm already getting flack from people for making the docs too difficult to contribute to. That looks to be a little daunting for the novice user. I'm aware that the more difficult we make this, the easier it is for a potential contributor to think it's too much work, and not bother. Is there a visual editor for MetaPost? > A related point: > > Most figures are going to need some text embedded in them. When > translated, this text can change radically in size and may need to be > repositioned in the figure. Boxes may need to be resized and/or > moved around. In the interest of easing the translation teams' work > it would be useful to describe pictures in a high-level way (e.g:- > "connect this box to that one there with a wavy line") and have the > build process automatically handle the details of positioning > and sizing of the picture's components. This is possible today when > using MetaPost or TeX. Ditto with dia. By default, dia's output format is compressed. If you tell it not to compress files ("File" -> "Preferences") then the save format is a valid XML document, marked up in dia's own DTD. This means you can edit with any old text editor, embed at the top of each file, and so on. > It would be even better to describe our figures in SGML :). Do you know > of any DTDs being used to describe figures and diagrams? See previous paragraph. If you feel better about it, you can consider dia to be a graphical editor for a document marked up in XML. If we can I'd be very happy if we can get the dia-to-eps functionality in a separate tool without all the additional dependencies (it's possible we can, my research hasn't gone that far yet). N -- Internet connection, $19.95 a month. Computer, $799.95. Modem, $149.95. Telephone line, $24.95 a month. Software, free. USENET transmission, hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Thinking before posting, priceless. Somethings in life you can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard. -- Graham Reed, in the Scary Devil Monastery To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message