Re: [Cp-tools-discuss] Re: texidoclet on solaris8

[Alex Lancaster]

>>>>> "JP" == John Pritchard <address@hidden> writes:

JP> Hi Alex,

JP> I think it would be a very good thing for compatibility with the
JP> texi tools to be considered.

JP> It would be nice to be able to use one doclet to produce texi, and
JP> then texi2html and texi2pdf for the common web formats of the same
JP> document.

John,

Sorry for the (very) late followup [processing my backlog of mailing
list followups...]

Yes, I agree it should 'work', and we consider the compatibility with
texi tools in the minimal sense, of producing reasonable and not
incorrect .texi output that can be transformed into HTML or PDF.  If
there's a specific bug (or better, patch!) that you want fixed, then
please go ahead and file it on savannah, and we can address it.
However 'compatibility', this does not require that it necessarily be
aesthetically pleasing...  ;-)

In terms of the overal intent and design of the project, it's simply a
matter of time and resources.  When Julian started texidoclet, he had
a specific purpose in mind: info output in Emacs.  Whilst not
specifically preventing other formats to be generated, that was his
primary goal, and if others would like to add more functionality so
that it works better in another context (such as texi2{html,pdf}), all
well and good, but we don't have the resources to do that currently.

Also I discussed here:

AL> Also texidoclet maybe rewritten to use gjdoc directly at some
AL> stage, although nothing has been finalized.  There is also a
AL> direct-to-Docbook doclet somewhere about (don't know the URL off
AL> the top of my head, just Google "doclet", "Docbook" and "Java")

we may replace texidoclet completely with gjdoc, in which case
texidoclet (at least in it's current form) would become obsolete (or
folded into gjdoc).  Of course someone is always free to pick up
texidoclet under the terms of GPL, if really necessary, but I'm sure
we'd rather not fork and I'm sure we could do the folding in to gjdoc
and still allow decent .texi output as well.

Alex
-- 
  Alex Lancaster | Free Software Developer:  savannah.gnu.org, sourceforge.net