Re: lua manual in pdf

[Sam Roberts <sroberts@...>]

On Thu, Nov 16, 2006 at 02:47:11PM +0000, Rob Kendrick wrote:
> Just print the HTML help to a PDF, or alternatively, buy the books
> (which I imagine is the actual reason PDFs are not made available -
> which is fair.)

I bought the printed 5.1 manual (at the same time as PIL2), and I hope
that helps the lua team.

However, I don't use it. I still use the 5.0 manual. I've printed it
2-sided, 2-up, and I find it it much denser and more useful as a
reference in that form.

I recognize and appreciate the formidable amount of work that writing
takes, and that I got the 5.0 ref manual pdf (and lua) for free, but if
I had to make a choice...

I would MUCH rather see the lua reference manual always freely available
in .pdf and/or some other redistributable form (whatever the source is
now, XML, latex, whatever), than see the PIL (v1 or v2) online as html.
I want to buy books, and don't want to print them myself, ref stuff I
want in whatever my native help system is, and a web browser is NOT my
ref system of choice!

I do use the online 5.1 ref manual sometimes, because it has hyperlinked
C api docs that aren't anywhere else, and the source doesn't have any
comments.  I also add the lua source to my project's ctags path, and
often just read the source for "docs". This has the advantage that I can
find the function source in a single keystroke. If the ref manual was
available as XML, I could probably process it into a vim help file. That
would be truly grand!

Cheers,
Sam