Re: Announce: Grace project site operational

[Stephen Leake <stephen.a.leake.1@gsfc.nasa.gov>]

dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison) writes:

> Stephen Leake <stephen.a.leake.1@gsfc.nasa.gov> wrote in message
> news:<uznz4nfd7.fsf@gsfc.nasa.gov>...
> 
> > For example, a design and rational document for Grace would be good
>                             ^^^^^^^^
>                             rationale.
> I'm the worst person in here to be dissin' on someone else's spelling,
> but this one always rubs me the wrong way. Sorry.

It bugs me too :). But I don't run a spell checker on email or news
(wouldn't have caught this anyway). And I try to tone down my personal
checker, since I know I make mistakes too. Life is too short ...

> > Now I'll start another controversy; do it in LaTeX :).
> > 
> > Actually, I think texinfo is good for Gnu projects. Some seem to be
> > using DocBook, which I've never used.
> 
> From what I understand about it, I'd be inclined to pick texinfo
> (which I understand is a flavor of TeX) out of the choices you have
> above. It is the official Gnu doc system, 

Apparently that's true: http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards.html#SEC33
I had not realized that before.

> so that's what all the Gnu tools are set up to use. Also, it
> provides for producing both HTML and typeset versions. Apparently it
> can be processed by TeX proceesors too.

Using the Gnu program 'makeinfo', you can produce html, info, or TeX
output. If you produce TeX, you can then use the 'tex' program to
produce PDF, PS, or other 'hardcopy' formats. 'info' is an old
hyperlinked format (oldest I'm aware of); the best reader for it is
Emacs. 

> Note that no-one would deal with the texinfo documentation "sources"
> directly, unless they are updating them. Readers would use either
> the generated HTML versions, or some ready-for-printing format like
> Postscript or Acrobat.

Yes. I recommend PDF; the latest version has 'bookmarks', which are
like an always-visible, interactive table of contents.

-- 
-- Stephe