Texinfo

Texinfo

[Robert J. Chassell]

    Texinfo is not as sexy as HTML

True.  Texinfo has to produce HTML to become as sexy as HTML.

Texinfo can produce 10 or 11 output formats and can be produced
from DocBook.  One output format is HTML; another is PDF.  Yet
another is plain text.  Also, there are the two originals:
DVI (DeVice Independent) and Info (plus a bunch more).

The format of Texinfo may be old, but its outputs are as modern as HTML,
DVI, and text.  

-- 
    Robert J. Chassell                          
    bob@gnu.org                                 bob@rattlesnake.com
    http://www.rattlesnake.com                  http://www.teak.cc

Texinfo

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Robert J. Chassell writes:

 >     Texinfo is not as sexy as HTML

This really isn't a problem, because as you point out people can
automatically transform to HTML.  I don't know why people bring it up.

 > The format of Texinfo may be old,

This is a problem for acceptance by developers, and so somewhat
important.  However, it should be possible to automatically convert
(eg) reStructuredText to Texinfo as well as vice versa.  (You might
have to design an appropriate dialect of reST, but it's designed for
that.)

The real problem with Texinfo, however, is that it is a markup
language whose translator is a *compiler*.  This is not well suited to
online resources, whether wikis or help facilities built into
programs.  Contribute a Texinfo interpreter to Python, and you might
have an attractive proposition for the Bazaar developers.  But without
that, you would have to preprocess the Python source; it couldn't be
used as written (if the help strings were in Texinfo).  This is a
nonstarter.

I think a better alternative would be to keep Bazaar documentation in
a dialect of reST (or other suitable structured text) and provide a
docutils writer to produce Texinfo from that.

Re: Texinfo

[Richard Stallman]

    I think a better alternative would be to keep Bazaar documentation in
    a dialect of reST (or other suitable structured text) and provide a
    docutils writer to produce Texinfo from that.

Generating the Texinfo sources from some other format is fine.  The
GNU standards don't say that you need to edit manuals in Texinfo, only
that they should be available in Texinfo format.

Martin, how about it?

Re: Texinfo

[Martin Pool]

2009/12/14 Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>:
>    I think a better alternative would be to keep Bazaar documentation in
>    a dialect of reST (or other suitable structured text) and provide a
>    docutils writer to produce Texinfo from that.
>
> Generating the Texinfo sources from some other format is fine.  The
> GNU standards don't say that you need to edit manuals in Texinfo, only
> that they should be available in Texinfo format.
>
> Martin, how about it?

Hi,

I agree we should produce a Texinfo doc.  We have a bug to track this
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/219334> and people have suggested
some tools that may be able to do it.  If somebody who loves Texinfo
will tell me "run tool X with command line Y and it produces good
output" I'll put it in to the Makefile.

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>

Re: Texinfo

[Richard Stallman]

    I agree we should produce a Texinfo doc.  We have a bug to track this
    <https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/219334> and people have suggested
    some tools that may be able to do it.  If somebody who loves Texinfo
    will tell me "run tool X with command line Y and it produces good
    output" I'll put it in to the Makefile.

You may need to do more than that.  If your current doc format doesn't
have a converter to Texinfo, you need to either write one, or use
another doc format.

What doc source format do you use now?

Re: Texinfo

[Martin Pool]

2009/12/16 Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>:
>    I agree we should produce a Texinfo doc.  We have a bug to track this
>    <https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/219334> and people have suggested
>    some tools that may be able to do it.  If somebody who loves Texinfo
>    will tell me "run tool X with command line Y and it produces good
>    output" I'll put it in to the Makefile.
>
> You may need to do more than that.  If your current doc format doesn't
> have a converter to Texinfo, you need to either write one, or use
> another doc format.
>
> What doc source format do you use now?

We use ReST.

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>