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Re: free/open documentation formats



On Sunday, 2001-12-02 at 21:03:18 -0800, Karsten M. Self wrote:
> on Mon, Dec 03, 2001 at 01:03:46AM +0100, Timo Boewing (blazko@online.de) wrote:

> > for some future and current works i want to provide my writings
> > additionally in other formats than xhtml. Has anyone a link to a list
> > of free documentation formats? The problem is that i want to avoid
> > using formats on that evtl. patents are pending.  for example, i would
> > like to provide my stuff using portable document format (pdf) and
> > postscript (ps), but i am not shure if the formats as such are free
> > cos adobe has a trademark on them.

> > any hints?

> There are authoring formats and display formats.

> For authoring, I'd strongly recommend either LaTeX or DocBook, not
> necessarially in that order.

I had a hard time getting the DocBook tools working enough to
convert the docs of one free software package on Solaris x86.
I can't call them universal.

Timo, if you want a simple format, look at POD (Plain Old Documentation).
It is used by the Perl documentation, and has a lot of converters. E.g.
manpage, HTML, plain text, PostScript, PDF. Look for Pod::<foo> modules
at http://search.cpan.org if you want to know more.
	http://search.cpan.org/search?mode=module&query=Pod

HTH,
Lupe Christoph
-- 
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