Bug 87381

Summary:	More documentation formats
Product:	[OLD] Docs-user	Reporter:	Mael Hilléreau <mael.hillereau>
Component:	Handbook	Assignee:	Docs Team <docs-team>
Status:	RESOLVED WONTFIX
Severity:	enhancement	CC:	jkt
Priority:	High
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
URL:	http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---

Description Mael Hilléreau 2005-03-31 00:56:36 UTC

In the FAQ, it is said:
  "Although we currently only have an online version, other formats are being
  developed, such as PDF versions. If we created PDFs for every architecture and
  option, we would have to provide numerous PDFs of which only a few sections
  differ. Talk about a waste of resources :)."
Why don't you put the manual sources (XML format or anything else) on the web, and explain the user how to obtain the format he wants? i.e. if you don't wan't to make the PDF by yourself, why don't you provide the user with means to make it by himself...

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
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Comment 1 Xavier Neys (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2005-03-31 02:46:43 UTC

The XML format *is* the source of all documents and is available online.
You can add ?passthru=1 to any .xml url to get the untransformed xml, you can browse our CVS (link on home page) or you can download snapshots per language of all files under /doc from http://www.gentoo.org/dyn/doc-snapshots/

If you want to transform the xml into anything but html, you're on your own, but feel free to contribute any transform you might cook up if you think it could be of any value to the Gentoo community.

Comment 2 Mael Hilléreau 2005-03-31 05:54:08 UTC

Firstly, thanks for responding quickly.
Ok, by the way, I can get the XML sources of the manuals. But how do you get PDF from them ?
It is possible because an english PDF version of the handbook is available in the first 2005.0 Gentoo CDROM. Then, my question is: How do Gentoo developers obtain this PDF from the XML files ?
I think it would be great for non-english speaking users to be able to get the PDF version of the manual by themselves...

Comment 3 Jan Kundrát (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2005-04-01 13:40:17 UTC

Why "by themselves"? Why not generate the PDF docs in the similar way as the HTML docs? If the PDF version of 2005.0 is really included on the CDs, there *are* some XSLT stylesheets (or other means of conversion tools) available. Or would it put too big pressure to the webserver? I'm not familiar with gorg's caching system...

Comment 4 Sven Vermeulen (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2005-04-07 10:17:01 UTC

It's indeed too difficult; generating the PDFs stresses the system quite a lot and  needs tools that aren't available on our webservers (due to security, maintenance and stability reasons). Having the docdevs generate the PDFs themselves every time the handbook is updated is also a no-go.