Re: HTML for docs? (was Re: CF: proposed docs (longish))

[Klaus Elsbernd <elsbernd@dfki.uni-kl.de>]

Hello
Raphael.Quinet@eed.ericsson.se wrote:
> > I would vote against html. I instead suggest {la}tex2html, to convert
> > the documents to html.
> 
> The conversion from TeX or LaTeX to HTML is not very good, especially if
> you want to have nice tables and color images in your documentation.
I don't think so(see http://www.ifi.uio.no/~larso/spoiler2/spoiler.shtml).

> Let's face it: nowadays, many more people will be able to read HTML
> files than LaTeX or PostScript files.  Also, as Mark mentioned, it
> will then be easy to put the docs on a WWW server, which could be very
> useful.  I suspect (and hope) that several people who have been
> reluctant at updating the docs for CrossFire because they don't know
> TeX or LaTeX will prefer to edit HTML docs.  Mind you, I have been
> using LaTeX for years and I like it (very good for writing technical
> reports) but now I think that HTML is more appropriate for documents
> that are distributed on the Internet.
As I said it before, I don't think that it is 'very' usefull, having
documentation in html. I know, that it is modern to have them. I won't be
unmodern, I like to 'sync with time', but most of the time, the docs will
be printed :-(.
As you can see, Lars Henrik Bøler Olafsen <larso@ifi.uio.no> made a very
nice conversion within days, or minutes :-).
I although use LaTeX since years, and I have no trouble writing small
text in LaTeX. But I have many difficults, in writing 'blinking buttons',
'running texts' and other features of WWW-Browser (and I don't know, if
this feature is only available on this version of the browser). And all
this features won't be needed to this extent within crossfire docs. (Imho.)
(It's not as difficult for me, as I wrote, because it's my job, but for
many lusers. At least in our environment.)

Someone mentioned, that LaTeX is not running on all platforms. I know of
no major platform, where no TeX is running (especially under unix). But I
know of serveral platforms not running netscape (if you use their speciall
table support)

Beside that. There will always be some code/shell-scripts in awk, perl
lisp or whatever, to generate parts (the stat/wapon/amour/... tables),
which can produce either TeX-Code. (And they can produce html too :-))
So you have to combine many tools, to generate a documentation. This task
is not easy, and probably will not be in the near future. So you need
someone, which knows all, or most of the tools. And if this person knows
LaTeX, it would produce better output.


MfG
Klaus

ps: I'm not good in writing english, but I hope I could express my opinion.
And so, I shouldn't argue to loud, because I can't write the docs :-(
(If someone has difficults with LaTeX and LaTeX-Scripts-Interfaces, I'll be 
glad
to help him/her)

-- 
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| Klaus Elsbernd, DFKI/Universit"at Kaiserslautern  | elsbernd@dfki.uni-kl.de |
! System Administrator and BOFH                     |                         |
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