Re: KDE docs in other formats
On Thu, 19 Jul 2001, Ivan E. Moore II wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 01:27:24PM -0600, Bruce Sass wrote:
> >
> > Anyone know of any KDE2.2 docs available as texinfo,
> > or ps, pdf, html, plain text?
> >
> > ...anything but docbook, it is just way too slow.
> >
> >
> > I think KDE really blew it on this one, or maybe the build process for
> > the docs is broken... I've always looked at LaTeX, SGML (docbook, xml,
> > etc.), etc. as the *source* for documents -- which then gets converted
> > to html, texinfo, rtf, ps, whatever.
>
> I totally disagree. docbook is the perfect format because these are
> the *source* for documents... it allows for extremely easy language translations,
> and does not require the distro to produce *.html/*.txt/*.etc... versions of
> all the documentation. One only has to have a docbook viewer (both KDE and
> Gnome support reading of .docbook files directly) or you can convert it into
> your own favorite extension.
>
Do you use the source of a program, or the program itself...
...if it is not acceptable to have "$ command" result in the command
being compiled from source, then executed... why is the same paradigm
OK for documents.
Docbook is a good __*source*__ format, but converting it to something
better suited for display should be part of building the package...
"make html", "make info", "make text", ...like I see other source
packages provide.
> Yes..it is slow due to the conversion/reading process but one gives up some
> things to gain alot of other things.
_Nothing_ is gained by the user reading docbook directly,
much less "alot".
"apropos docbook" doesn't show me any viewers; "grep docbook
/var/lib/dpkg/available | grep viewer" doesn't show anything; I just
did a search on "docbook" in dselect -- not one package provided a
docbook viewer, and it is a bit of a stretch to say that docbook2texi
and docbook2man even remotely imply that something done in the DocBook
SGML DTD is a final product... especially when all the tools seem to
be concerned with generating (not converting) HTML, RTF, text, and
other formats that are commonly recognized by a user as something they
want to look at, from stuff done with the docbook DTD.
...do I need to install Gnome so I can look at the KDE docs when the
Khelpcenter breaks, and I can't look at the formatted docs unless I
fire up a GUI or generate some other format first. Is the DTD
provided in kdebase, or do I need to install a -dev package before I
can generate HTML from the .docbook files using the standard tools.
What does KDE do internally that takes so long (I bet you hope it
is something other than convert to HTML then render, eh ;-).
How do I generate HTML from KDE's docbook based documentation?
I leave you with this rhetorical question...
If DocBook is such a great format for the end-user to have their
documentation in, why are the files in /usr/share/doc/docbook-doc
HTML.
- Bruce
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