[reportlab-users] manual proposal

[adam hyde]

hey

FLOSS Manuals is a community of documentation writers, as well as a
place to go to write manuals. Its designed for documentation writing and
the promotion of the documentation.  FM outputs to multiple formats,
including an embed api for hosting manuals on your own site, pdf for
book formatted pdf (controlled by css) for print on demand, PDF for
download, and downloadable html in zip or tar. We also have deb
packaging coming up so manuals can be installed using apt (this material
will be in the default Ubuntu repositories). we can probably export to a
format of your choice with a bit of dev for the svn sync

however the manuals would be hosted on the flossmanuals site as that is
the toolset and the focus of the community. 

if you want the manuals on your own server then it would be best to go
with the mediawiki option.

adam


On Mon, 2008-10-20 at 12:23 -0200, Roberto Alsina wrote:

> 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

> 

> `9_ 9 ) `-. ( ).`-._.`) KDE Developer (MFCH)

> 

> (_Y_.)' ._ ) `._`. " -.-' http://lateral.netmanagers.com.ar 

> 

> _..`-'_..-_/ /-'_.' The 6,855th most popular site of Slovenia 

> 

> (l)-'' ((i).' ((!.' according to alexa.com (27/5/2007) 

> 

> 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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-- 
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
http://www.flossmanuals.net