Re: lua manual in pdf

["Andy Stark" <AStark@...>]

Lua list <lua@bazar2.conectiva.com.br> on Thursday, November 16, 2006 at
14:46 +0000 wrote:
>But if people can agree on a set of tools (and agree that docbook would
>be useful), I can try again.

I think it might be better to use a simpler custom XML format for the
manual rather than DocBook, which is painfully complicated for something
as straightforward as the Lua manual.

It seems to be a major advantage for a language like Lua to have its docs
in a form that is easily repurposed. As well as embedding the language in
the host program, a commercial user might also want to add Lua
documentation to their own user manual. If the main Lua ref manual was in
XML format, it should be easy to drop it in as a chapter in another,
larger document and change its styling to match (the Lua copyright licence
allows this, I think?) This might help to reduce overall costs/workload
for any software that embeds Lua and thereby make Lua a more attractive
language for embedding. After all, when people embed Lua in their
software, they are also "embedding" the responsibilities that go along
with Lua into their production process.

(Of course, the same advantages apply to TeX up to a point - making the
manual's source available is a good move, whether it's XML, TeX, Markdown
or whatever.)

By the way... as for an XML toolchain, I have found Apache Ant
surprisingly good for these things. You can arrange a set of various XSLT,
XSL-FO tasks, etc, and have them all run as a single build process. <
Sound of another Holy War starting with makefile fans... >

&.


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