Re: [docbook-apps] Producing Open Source Software

[Bram Vogelaar <mylists@teambla.com>]

interesting, i ll wait to see what they say about it
bram
On 13 Mar 2009, at 21:00, Richard Quadling wrote:

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