RE: automatic generation of quickref.html

Charlie wrote:
>>> What most folks end up doing is embed CDATA sections, in which
>>> case the result is no good for man pages.
>> 
>> Maybe it's not getting parsed?   Also, something like this might
>> provide a base: 
>> 
>>   http://docbook2x.sourceforge.net/latest/doc/manpages.html
 
> Doc Book (or something like it) may be a good choice.

Actually, I wasn't suggesting here using Docbook instead as the *native*
format -- the XML you designed is more appropriate and nicer IMO -- just as
an idea for one approach of getting *ML into man page format.

Then Terry wrote:

> I would agree about DocBook. Not that we need it in this case, but I
> looked at various conversion utilities to/from DocBook for various
> projects I am working on. Here is one I used :
> 
> 	<http://www.catb.org/~esr/doclifter/>

That looks good.  But I think *Tidy* emiting Docbook itself is a bit too
much.  Docbook is great for what it's designed for but, like HTML, carries a
lot of baggage that's way overkill to build into the Tidy source, IMO.

I suppose if you really wanted to go all out, you *could* enable Tidy to
handle 

	tidy --quickref-docbook
	tidy --quickref-xhtml

*in addition to* the concise XML that Charlie provided, but it seems like
pretty excessive bloat, not to mention unnecessary future headache when the
Docbook/XHTML versions get upgraded/changed (as is currently happening to
both).  

I think it would be simpler and cleaner to have Tidy just emit Charlie's
simple format upon request ("just the facts, Ma'am"), then afterwards do
pipeline processing to create whatever you want from that, e.g.

	ConfigML | some XSLT -> Docbook
	ConfigML | some XSLT -> XHTML
	ConfigML | some XSLT -> HTML
	ConfigML | (whatever) -> Manpage
	ConfigML | some XSLT -> Docbook | (whatever) -> Manpage
	ConfigML | (whatever) -> (whatever)

(Where "(whatever)" could be perl/python/shell scripts and/or, well,
whatever...)

One simple input, an infinite number of possible outputs. 

/Jelks



-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: 2005 Windows Mobile Application Contest
Submit applications for Windows Mobile(tm)-based Pocket PCs or Smartphones
for the chance to win $25,000 and application distribution. Enter today at
http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_idh82&alloc_id148&op=click