A start on the User Manual; appearance; other opinions

Brian Gough wrote:

> As there seems to be a discussion of formats ... I would recommend
> Texinfo, the standard GNU format.
>
> I have used this for a 500+ page manual involving a lot of
> mathematics, and it works fine in my opinion (see the documentation
> links at http://sources.redhat.com/gsl/ for example).  It was also
> used for the 'GNU Emacs Calc' and 'GNU R' manuals, which are
> mathematical too.
>
> I have successfully converted the file from Texinfo into the following
> formats:
>
>    HTML (with and without equation images -- I prefer without),
>    PDF (with scalable fonts),
>    Windows WinHelp (& HTMLHelp)
>
> as well as Postscript (US Letter, A4, and 6"x9" trade paperback) and
> Info of course.
>
> I have tried some of the other solutions out there at various times
> and they did not match up to Texinfo under heavy usage in my opinion.
>
> regards
> Brian Gough
>

I second stongly the texinfo format. It was precisely designed to
facilitate converting into other common document formats.
Using texinfo one can easily get
.info - good for online browsing on text console
.html - good for online browsing under any GUI
.tex - for high quality printed documents
.tex can be easily converted into .pdf or .ps.

Regards,

Vadim


--

[ Vadim V. Zhytnikov  <vvzhy@mail.ru>  <vvzhy@td.lpi.ac.ru> ]