Re: Abiword documentation update project started

On Thu, 31 Aug 2006, J.M. Maurer wrote:

> Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 16:03:08 +0200
> From: J.M. Maurer <uwog@uwog.net>
> To: Ryan Pavlik <abiryan@ryand.net>
> Cc: Alexander van Loon <svloon@xs4all.nl>, abiword-dev@abisource.com
> Subject: Re: Abiword documentation update project started

> [snip]

> > I would also like to add that the docbook support was just overhauled by
> > Sum1 during the Summer of Code, and so keeping the existing
> > infrastructure and simply adapting it to work more efficiently for GNOME
> > (since it is functional for Windows in its current form as well) would
> > be a better solution perhaps.
>
> The problem is NOT that abi's docbook support is not good enough. The
> problem is that 'master abw help files' are totally _unmaintainable for
> translators_. What if someone changes the master en-US abw file? How do
> translators know that they should update? Now with some additional
> scripts, one could detect this. But most likely all scripts will be
> totally broken again if our output changes.

So is the plan to change the master files to Docbook and then generate
HTML/PDF from the Docbook to serve the needs of other platforms?

The plan if there is one has not been clearly explained yet. While it
would be great to get good help in Docbook format for Gnome it would be a
shame to leave the other platforms behind or an attempt was made to start
new documentation from scratch instead of refactoring and improving the
old.

I always thought the biggest advantage of using ABW as a master format
would mean at least one platform would use Abiword itself to view the ABW
help files directly.

-- 
Alan