Documentation code.

[Joe Armstrong]

    Hello OTPers,

   I guess you read this list ...

    Are  there  any  thoughts   about  publically  releasing  the  OTP
documentation code? By this I mean the sgml -> Tex/html/man code?

   I think it would be a good idea to release this code so that people can
contribute applications that are documented with OTP "look and feel".

   At the moment if I want to write any documentation I'd have to choose
the docbook dtd for documentation - this is sub-optimal since the OPT dtds
*were* designed for documenting Erlang.

   Another question: Where is the OTP documentation going? - I can see
a few alternatives.

   1) Become "mainstream" i.e. aim for DocBook convergence and use
      jade/DSSL to transform to HTML/PDF/MIFF
   2) Use some non-mainstream "weirdo" sub-optimal technology
      MS-word or Framemaker
   3) Support and maintain the erldoc DTD's and the transformation code
      [and possibly migrate to XML]

    If you want a "documentation  system" (and not just a random hodge
podge  of miscellaneous  bits of  paper that  goes under  the  name of
documentation) then  I guess 3)  is the right  way to go. But  3) will
wither and die without a user community - so please guys - release the
code.

    BTW - a very nice community  project would be to take the existing
code for 3)  and "open sourcify it" and hack in  support for MIFF, and
(difficult) do the transformations in Jade.

    Another  nice project  would  be to  transform  the existing  SGML
documentation into a suitable format  for on-line browsing and help in
the command line shell.

  /Joe 

--
Joe Armstrong,                       
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