I would be interested in contributing to a Lubuntu manual. John C
On Mon, Jun 3, 2013, at 02:00 AM, Kevin Godby wrote: > Hello, Steve. > > On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 2:58 PM, Yorvyk <yorvik.ubu...@googlemail.com> > wrote: > >> Are you considering proposing some type of partnership with the > >> Ubuntu Manual Project? > > > > Yes, no, maybe, but I'd like the opinions of the current manual team on > > this. Could the Lubuntu part be part of the current book or should it be > > a separate entity. I think the later. I see no point in creating an > > entirely separate structure when there is already one we could latch on > > to, but again I would like the opinions of those already involved. > > I think it'd be best if the Lubuntu material were in a separate > manual. Otherwise the reader would constantly have to determine if the > information their reading is for Ubuntu or Lubuntu. > > You're welcome to use our toolchain and I'm happy to help you get > started. We could even host PDFs of the Lubuntu manual on our website > if you like. > > Phill forwarded one of the messages from the Lubuntu-users mailing > list to the Ubuntu-docs mailing list when you guys were discussing > markup languages. I wrote a response to Phill with my thoughts. I've > included the text of that email below. You're welcome to forward it > along if you like. > > ——— > I skimmed through the thread on the lubuntu-users list. I'm the > primary LaTeX guy on the Ubuntu Manual project. If you're interested > in using our toolchain to built a Lubuntu manual I'm happy to help out > with that or answer any questions. > > I'm not too clear on the goal or desired form of the Lubuntu manual, > so here are some general notes. > > LaTeX is a great typesetting system for generating PDFs and printed > documents. It's fairly useless when it comes to generating any other > formats, though. If you only want to have a PDF or printed book, then > using LaTeX for the source format will serve you just fine. If you > want to generate ebooks, web sites, or other formats (in addition to > or instead of the PDF or printed book), then I would recommend > *against* using LaTeX as your primary source format. LaTeX is quite > difficult to parse and there aren't any good parsers out there to > convert LaTeX reliably to other formats. > > The Ubuntu docs project uses Mallard as its source format. Mallard is > an XML-based markup language. The Mallard files are used in Yelp (the > desktop documentation viewer) and are converted to HTML for the > help.ubuntu.com website. Mallard is a decent format for writing > technical documentation as it was designed with that specific goal in > mind. Since Mallard is XML-based, it can be parsed easily by many > tools and converted to other formats. > > The Ubuntu docs project used to use Docbook as its source format and > the other derivative documentation projects and the Ubuntu server > guide still use Docbook. Docbook, like Mallard, is XML-based. It's > considerably more complex than Mallard but you can stick to a smaller > subset of its markup if you like. As with Mallard, Docbook can be > parsed by a number of tools and converted to other formats fairly > easily. > > To generate the Ubuntu server guide PDF, the Docbook sources are run > through Apache FOP instead of LaTeX. I'm not all that familiar with > Apache FOP. I do generally prefer LaTeX's PDFs to those that FOP > generates, however. I think the output looks a lot nicer. This may > simply be because the default stylesheets used by Apache FOP aren't > very good, though. > > To sum up my recommendations: > > If you're looking to generate topic-based help similar to the current > documentation on help.ubuntu.com, then I recommend starting with > Mallard markup. Mallard is designed specifically for this purpose. > Mallard doesn't appear to be suitable for books, however. > > If you're looking to generate *only* a printed book or PDF, then you > can start with LaTeX as the Ubuntu Manual project has. LaTeX is not > easily converted to other formats but is specifically designed to > typeset printed books. > > If you're looking to generate a printed book and an ebook and a > website, then I'd suggest starting with Docbook. While Docbook is more > complicated than Mallard (there are a lot more tags to learn), it's > also more flexible and is geared toward generating longer-form > documents like books. Since it's XML-based, it can be converted > fairly easily to other formats such as HTML and even LaTeX. > > Incidentally, if you do choose to go the Docbook → LaTeX → PDF route, > I would suggest tweaking the LaTeX to improve it's formatting as > Docbook doesn't specify all the nitpicky typographical tweaks that > LaTeX can take advantage of. (But that's just me being a bit of a > perfectionist.) > > Please feel free to forward this email to the lubuntu-users list and > anyone else you like. And I'm happy to answer any questions about > LaTeX, the Ubuntu Manual tools and processes, or other markup > languages (though I'm not quite as familiar with them). > ——— > > —Kevin Godby > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-manual > Post to : ubuntu-manual@lists.launchpad.net > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-manual > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp -- Look! 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