A start on the User Manual



--- Raymond Toy <toy@rtp.ericsson.se> wrote:
> >>>>> "CY" == C Y <smustudent1@yahoo.com> writes:
> 
>     CY> Umm...  I think you're confusing the user manual and the
> reference
>     CY> manual.  What we are doing here is the user manual. 
> Reference will
>     CY> come later, after we have more people
 who have read the user
> manual
>     CY> :-).  At that point, we'll think about working with describe.
> 
> 
> Ok.  I hope the user and reference manual stay in sync then.
> Hopefully the reference manual will be more up-to-date.

That's kind of what I'm thinking - the reference manual will be updated
at the same time an update is loaded into CVS, while the User Manual
will be updated for a release.
 
> I did this for the CMUCL User's manual.  It was originally in
> latexinfo.  Converted it to latex, which was easy.  Getting
> latex2html
> to convert the latex into html was a giant pain.  Taking several
> hours
> to do the conversion didn't help either.  In fact, since that initial
> effort, I have been unable to get latex2html to convert it again
> since.  I have heard there are some errors in the latex source, but I
> don't know where they are.

While, I guess it will pay if we write clean LaTeX.  I just ran
latex2html on the current file, and it was fairly quick and did most of
the stuff right.  (Pictures came out bad, but I don't think that's
latex2html's fault.)  I need to clean up my code some, but initial
indications seem to be that it can be made to work, with the possible
exception of math equations.  

> However, there are other converters (hevea) that seem to work better.
> That's how the current CMUCL manual is done.

I'll give that one a try when I get a chance.
 
> If HTML is important, it is important that NO manual twiddling is
> needed.

Not sure how important it is - I don't use it too much, but I'm not
sure about everybody else.  OK, quick survey - what form of
documentation do you use ordinarily guys?  HTML, ps, pdf, printed, etc?
 (In any case, I'll see if HTML can be made to work.)
 



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