Re: documentation and the book module (was reflections onthe Drupal 4.3.0 battle)

On Wed, 22 Oct 2003, Peter VanDijck wrote:
> It seems to me we have 2 audiences:
> - (some) developers want to write docs using CVS and some hardcore doc
> format.
> - (some) less techie contributors want to contribute to the
> documentation.
> 
> Both have good arguments. 

And what if we'd make a small module that loads a LaTeX or Docbook source
file, presents it in a textarea and lets you update it?  You would not be
able to preview your changes but once you click submit, a patch is
generated (against the source file) and send out to the drupal-user
mailing list for people to pick up, test, and - eventually - commit to
CVS.

> My pov is that editing and writing is indeed a lot more work than
> generating an index and such, so we should optimize for that.

That is exactly why I suggest to use LaTeX or Docbook; they enforce
consistency and take over nearly all visual aspects.  Using these tools,
the writer can focus on writing text.  They are specifically designed for
documentation/book writing.

Anyway, I give this discussion some more thought.  In the mean time, I
rest my case; no significant documentation improvements are going to
happen unless someone puts a lot of time and energy in improving the book
module.

Implementing such improvements is not on my radar of current priorities
because I know that the result will never match that of the manuals on my
book shelves -- or that of a carefully crafted PDF file.

Hopefully someone will stand up and proof me wrong; either with code,
significant documentation updates or a better idea.

-- 
Dries Buytaert  ::  http://www.buytaert.net/
-- 
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