Re: Sphinx integration

Dave Abrahams <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.lib.boost.documentation
Message-ID <[email protected]>
on Tue Sep 27 2011, Mateusz Loskot <mateusz-AT-loskot.net> wrote:

> On 27/09/11 01:09, Dean Michael Berris wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 9:46 AM, Mateusz Loskot <[email protected]>
>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Has anyone considered it?
>> 
>> I/we use it in cpp-netlib for both docs and the website.
>
> So, you write it in reStructuredText, right?
>
>>> Would it be valid to discuss Sphinx for Boost?
>> 
>> I for one would welcome discussion about it.
>
> The major problem I have with the current Boost documentation framework
> is too big diversity of documenting tools and workflows, lack of content
> writing uniformity, none or not ideal source-to-doc
> translation (e.g. Doxygen issues). 

Exactly.  And now you're proposing to increase the diversity... unless
you mean to rewrite all the existing docs.

> Remembering long way of documenting Boost.Geometry, I'm not 100% happy
> with the results.  Perhaps it's only my opinion.  I'm not going to
> ignite any fermentation. I'm just curious, if boostdoc/quickbook is
> really superior to, say, reStructuredText + Sphinx tandem.

The differences run deep.  If it was a totally clear cut win for ReST,
I'd have pushed for its exclusive adoption years ago.

- quickbook is an extensible programming language; ReST is explicitly
  trying *not* to be programmable

- quickbook generates boostbook, which can represent rich semantic
  information.  ReST can't very cleanly express arbitrary semantic or
  visual markup (bold-italic anyone?)

- quickbook is maintained by Boosters when they have the time, docbook
  is maintained externally

- quickbook takes a long time to compile, docbook is Python

- quickbook is not really used outside of Boost; docbook is used by
  manymanymany

- there's no usable Emacs editing mode for quickbook; there is for ReST.

...

Any ideas about how to address these issues?

-- 
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com
lmpx.com only provides a reader for public news (NNTP) servers. It is not affiliated with the servers or forums shown here and is not responsible for the content of articles, which is written by their respective authors.