Re: [STATUS] ADP (Wed 13-Aug-1997 11:43 MET DST)

On Wed, 13 Aug 1997, Ralf S. Engelschall wrote:

> STATUS of the Apache Documentation Project (ADP)
[snip]
> o Decision on the used markup tool:
[snip]
> - Simple Document Format (SDF)
Strictly speaking, SDF isn't a successor of POD: it started life before POD did (to my knowledge) and has been recently enhanced to make it easy for POD authors to migrate to it if and when they need something more powerful.

> Votes: RSE +1 iff(!) the author Ian Clatworthy
I've started work on the requested enhancements and hope to have direct LaTeX output available in a few days. Work has been busy and we've had relatives staying for most of the last week, so my free time has been limited. As I discussed with Ralf via email before I joined the mailing list, if you guys do decide to go with SDF, I'm happy to support you as best I can by delivering the functionality you need (within reason) as soon as I can.

[snip]
> Some ideas and wishes:
In SDF, change bars are typically added like this:

!block changed
This paragraph has been
changed since the last release.
!endblock

At the moment, this is only supported for PostScript generated via FrameMaker. My boss has been bugging me to support HTML, but I'm yet to decide on the best way. (Using colored table cells is one possiblility, but it has its drawbacks.) When I know a bit more about LaTeX, I'll add change bar support for it.

> Ralf S. Engelschall:
> I really want the output formats look as similar as it is possible, i.e.
This is a good principle provided it isn't taken too far. For example, it isn't uncommon for paper documents to have a fancy title page followed by copyrights, etc., but translating this directly to HTML is less than optimal as online readers usually want quick access to the table of contents. SDF gets around this by using the build_title macro like this:

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  !define DOC_NAME "Apache Handbook"
  !build_title

This generates a fancy cover page for PostScript and a concise title for HTML.

Other than that (feature), the main difference between PostScript and HTML generated by SDF is that the HTML doesn't yet have section numbering. This is number 1 on my boss' list (he's a heavy user of SDF) for fixes so this should be fixed before long. :-)

Ian Clatworthy (ianc@mincom.com) Received on Wed Aug 13 04:29:44 1997