Date: Mon, 13 Jan 1997 13:32:29 -0500 (EST) From: John Fieber <jfieber@indiana.edu> To: hoek@freenet.hamilton.on.ca Cc: eivind@dimaga.com, FreeBSD hackers <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org>, Joerg Wunsch <joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de> Subject: Re: new texinfo is busted! Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.3.95.970113131251.264G-100000@fallout.campusview.indiana.edu> In-Reply-To: <199701121544.KAA18539@james.freenet.hamilton.on.ca>
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On Sun, 12 Jan 1997 hoek@freenet.hamilton.on.ca wrote: > In Email, Eivind Eklund <eivind@dimaga.com> wrote: > > > > I'm in favour. I haven't yet seen a good browser for info, and it is pain > > to get the ones that exist to even open the files. While we're at it, it > > would even be nice to have the man-pages as HTML - not as a replacement > > format, but as an alternative. > > Rewrite them all in docbook, and you'd probably be just about set. I've > seen a docbook->man thingy somewhere and I'm sure docbook->html exists, > too. The docbook->html exists in freebsd-current actually. :) TeXinfo->docbook + mdoc->docbook and the system is complete. Well, I still don't have docbook->groff, but that is just a matter of when, not if. For man pages, docbook to HTML is faster than mdoc to ascii. Docbook to ascii or postscript will be slower since it goes through groff, plus docbook to groff conversion. For our linuxdoc legacy documents (handful of tutorials, FAQ and handbook), my linuxdoc->docbook converter is working quite well considering the bogosities of the linuxdoc DTD and the subsequent bogous markup practices found in the handbook/FAQ and the many linuxdoc HOWTO's I've been testing it on. It isn't 100% automatic--some documents need manual tweaks before conversion, and all need work after to take full advantage of the much richer docbook DTD. If we are talking about an alternate format from which other formats can be derived, HTML is ***not*** appropriate. Docbook was designed specifically for software documentation and it works quite well in my experience. -john
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