[Expat-discuss] Time for a new release?

[Marco Maggi]

"Fred Drake" wrote:
>> I have started a binding to Expat.
>
>Wonderful!  What Scheme implementations
>are you supporting?

I will tell you whenever I have something
working.

>Why Texinfo?  I'm a little surprised that's
>used any more.

For a number of reasons, most of which are
probably specific to myself.  I have to say
that I am not prepared to "defend" Texinfo,
anyway I will try with the following list
of pros.

Notice that I have pushed a fixed version
of the file[1], which solves problems with
conversion to PDF.

1. I am already sending to you a Texinfo
   version, not LaTeX or Docbook or
   Doxygen or whatever.  :-)

2. We can generate XML source with:

|  $ makeinfo --xml expat.texi

   then... well, we are talking about an XML
   library here...  The DTD is available[2].
   Docbook output is available, too:

|  $ makeinfo --docbook expat.texi

   I cannot speak for the quality of the
   conversion because I never used the XML
   output.  But it is here, so it provides
   an exit strategy from the format.

2. Available human readable output formats
   are: Info, plain text, HTML, DVI, PDF.
   Each of them is generated by issuing a
   single command (no complicated Makefile
   rules are needed, like for LaTeX).

3. Generating output from a Texinfo file
   is fast, even for big documents.

4. A programmer can learn how to edit a
   Texinfo file in a day.  I am available
   to give hints if there is the need.

5. There is a nice Emacs mode to edit Texinfo
   files, which (believe me) allows us to keep
   the documentation in a single file even if
   it becomes huge (I am maintaining a single
   Texinfo file of about 793K).

6. The format is easy, so it is also easy to
   write some Emacs function to automate tasks.
   A lot can be done with simple regular
   expressions.

7. The Info format is readable on a terminal
   and in Emacs, with incremental search and
   autocompletion of node names and index
   entries (available on the terminal, too).

8. There is a huge body of existing documentation
   written in Texinfo (Glibc, GCC, GMP, GSL, MPFR,
   m4, gawk, Emacs, Mailutils), some of the
   documents are very well written.  So it is
   possible to write good documentation in this
   format, and there is interest in keeping the
   format around without ground breaking changes
   in the specification.

I am a terminal die harder, and I am really
satisfied with the Info output.  It is always
my first choice.

According to my taste, the PDF output is good
enough, and the HTML output (although a little
"plain") goes (there is worse stuff around).

Even with an unsophisticated reader like xpdf,
I can browse the PDF output and use the links
from the menu and the index.

The ball is in your court...

[1] http://github.com/marcomaggi/nausicaa/blob/b6e131f5391264fa05bd78d210fcc8f5647b7fac/expat/doc/expat.texi
[2] http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/dtd/4.8/texinfo.dtd
-- 
Marco Maggi