[FM Discuss] Adding LaTeX to FlossManuals.net for polishing/ layout

[DancesWithCars]

Docbook was one of the ones the ClassActs
group liked. Then someone cracked a whip
and we were to use flossmanuals html,
ignoring some layout issues that
now over a week after the sprint,
people aren't wanting to polish
with a difficult tool (i.e. participate)...

I spent a [very] little time with LyX
and the WYSIWYM (mean not get)
philosophy (let the machine do the
typesetting, and writer concentrate on
writing)  and must read the whole manual
got a little sickening, but wonder if
importing html inside LyX typesetting
makes more sense than exporting
FM to TeX/LaTeX.


On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 4:27 AM, Douglas Bagnall
<douglas at paradise.net.nz> wrote:
> Mani A wrote:
>
>> My suggestion would be to do all markup in Latex or context and then
>> convert to other formats.
>
>
> It is plain to all technically minded people that we should be using
> semantic mark-up, so variations of your suggestion are frequent.
>
> What we miss in this reasoning is that there are several hundred open
> source documentation initiatives, and FLOSS Manuals is the *one* that
> decided to concentrate on ease of authorship and a culture of
> participation over structure and processability.  Despite this, it is
> doing OK.  If crappy presentational markup was such a hindrance, we
> wouldn't even be on this list to complain about it -- the dozens of
> books by hundreds of authors are inseparable from the awful html.
>
> Regarding the question of html to *TeX conversion: I am unconvinced that
> this is worthwhile.  Automatic conversion to anything is going to be
> hard work, so we might as well convert to something that truly is a hub
> format, like docbook, rather than repeating the same task several times
> over.
>
> Douglas
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net
>



-- 
DancesWithCars
leave the wolves behind ;-)