[reportlab-users] manual proposal

[Roberto Alsina]

On Monday 20 October 2008 12:16:58 Andy Robinson wrote:

> 2008/10/20 Volker Haas <volker.haas at brainbot.com>:

> > Hi all,

> > I would like to point out another option of generating reportlab manuals.

> > I am one of the developers of the pediapress team and we built (and are

> > still extending and improving) a library to parse and output MediaWiki

> > articles as PDFs. The PDF export is done with reportlab - other output

> > options are odf, xml and xhtml. Multiple articles can be combined into a

> > book by using the Collection extension (mediawiki extension).

>

> Wow, we're spoilt for choice.  This is another project I regret I just

> didn't have time to catch up with.

>

> The third choice, and what I was aiming for, is Sphinx/docutils/rst2pdf. 

> If we help Roberto get rst2pdf working well enough that (a) we can use ReST

> in subversion and generate all outputs, and (b) the Python language itself

> could drop their current route to PDF and use our Python tools too. But it

> would be wrong for us to embark on something needing development if a good

> solution exists too.


I have contacted the sphinx group about it a while ago, and there was interest 
but it fizzled. I did manage to make it work, somewhat, but someone who 
understands sphinx would need to take a look, because I don't want to start
any more projects nowadays[1].

Anyway, if I may offer a suggestion: just keep your options open. Don't embark 
on anything that locks you in. I see you are already on that path, with the 
requirement of being able to host the docs on your repo and that they be in a 
"reasonable" format.

The chance to be able to link doc revisions to code revisions and bug issues 
is very important.

[1] Totally offtopic, but I am in a sort of funk regarding open source. The
"what's the point" kind. It took me 15 years to get to it, but it came hard.

-- 
 ("\''/").__..-''"`-. .         Roberto Alsina
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Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. 
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, 
by definition, not smart enough to debug it. --Brian W. Kernighan
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