OASIS Mailing List ArchivesView the OASIS mailing list archive below
or browse/search using MarkMail.

 


Help: OASIS Mailing Lists Help | MarkMail Help

docbook-apps message

[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [List Home]


Subject: Re: [docbook-apps] Producing Open Source Software


2009/3/13 Bram Vogelaar <mylists@teambla.com>:
> Hello Richard
>
> PhD seems like an interesting project to use to render docbook
> documentation.
> do you know generic PhD is at the moment. or are the themes very PHP
> documentation specific?
>
> bram
> On 6 Mar 2009, at 10:14, Richard Quadling wrote:
>
>> 2009/3/5 DavePawson <davep@dpawson.co.uk>:
>>>
>>> Eric Johnson wrote:
>>>>
>>>> One of the big hurdles for advocating the use of DocBook in “public”
>>>> open
>>>> source projects is that there are plenty of wiki based alternatives that
>>>> are
>>>> free, have short learning curves, and do not require “building”.
>>>
>>> True. There are always easier alternatives.
>>> These still require project effort to generate the documentation though?
>>
>> Hi.
>>
>> As a contributor to the PHP documentation, I have to say that the
>> tools we use have come a LONG way.
>>
>> We use DocBook 5 with a few tiny additions.
>>
>> We currently have a 2 step process to build the documentation, both
>> are written in PHP.
>>
>> The first pulls all the documentation into a single XML file. The
>> second processes the big xml file into HTML, PHP pages, CHM, PDF.
>>
>> There is some work on making this a single process.
>>
>> The current English documentation consists of around 12,500 files on
>> around 26Mb.
>>
>> Creating the entire range of output (plain HTML for standalone unfussy
>> local reading, PHP pages for the PHP.net sites/mirrors, HTML for the
>> CHM build process) takes around 10 mins on my slow desktop machine,
>> whilst running in idle mode (windows).
>>
>> The tool to convert the large XML to the resultant formats is called PhD.
>>
>> We have new people coming onboard to translate the manual using these
>> tools on a fairly regular basis.
>>
>> PhD is written in PHP and can be amended to create any style you like.
>> It is very extendable.
>>
>> Admittedly, getting the XML right is sometimes a bit of an issue for
>> the newbies, but they learn. Very quickly. Simply because their
>> commits fail to build. And are 2 steps produce all the output needed
>> to fix it.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Richard Quadling.
>>
>> http://wiki.php.net/doc/phd/install
>>
>>> That, I think, was the focus of Karens message.
>>>
>>>> Developers can easily contribute to the pool of documentation. The wiki
>>>> approach does have some drawbacks
>>>
>>> Yes, of course. Most alternatives have some pro's and con's.
>>>
>>> As Karen notes, documentation, in docbook, for docbook ....
>>> is weird anyway :-)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> regards
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dave Pawson
>>> XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
>>> http://www.dpawson.co.uk
>>>
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> To unsubscribe, e-mail: docbook-apps-unsubscribe@lists.oasis-open.org
>>> For additional commands, e-mail: docbook-apps-help@lists.oasis-open.org
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> -----
>> Richard Quadling
>> Zend Certified Engineer : http://zend.com/zce.php?c=ZEND002498&r=213474731
>> "Standing on the shoulders of some very clever giants!"
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> To unsubscribe, e-mail: docbook-apps-unsubscribe@lists.oasis-open.org
>> For additional commands, e-mail: docbook-apps-help@lists.oasis-open.org
>>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: docbook-apps-unsubscribe@lists.oasis-open.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: docbook-apps-help@lists.oasis-open.org
>
>

I'm not an expert on the themes. Contrary to popular self-delusion,
I'm not really an expert in anything.

I've passed this email onto Hannes and Christian, the main authors of
the PHP and PEAR themes. Hopefully they will reply as they have a far
better understanding of these things.

As I understand things, the themes are tuned to php.net's requirements.

But, for the xhtml outputs, there is a base class which should be quite usable.

I think the desire to have PhD being a generic DocBook renderer is
there. Having other DocBook sources available for use with PhD can
only be a good thing for PhD.

Richard.
-- 
-----
Richard Quadling
Zend Certified Engineer : http://zend.com/zce.php?c=ZEND002498&r=213474731
"Standing on the shoulders of some very clever giants!"


[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [List Home]