[Doc-SIG] SGML Python docs

[Fred L. Drake]

Laurence Tratt writes:
 > A while ago (around Easter time), it was said that the Python documentation
 > (manual reference, etc) would at some point be converted to SGML. The
 > current LaTeX is, frankly, rather useless compared to say the Perl POD
 > stuff if one wants to produce anything other than paper output or
 > LaTeX2HTML HTML (which results in a rather clumsy in the Python manual

  This is still planned.  The preliminary conversion script I'd been
working on has been massively broken due to the changes in the LaTeX
markup, and I think the breakage is permanent:  at this point, I'm
more likely to start a conversion script from scratch than try to
revive the old one yet again.
  On the other hand, the LaTeX markup has become much more logical,
which reduces the immediacy of the need for a conversion.  While I
still think SGML/XML will be the final form of the documentation, I
don't see a compelling need for a conversion at this time.  No matter
how we do things, there is no trivial conversion of the documentation
and related tools that gives us any benefits over the current
situation that I'm aware of; feel free to enlighten me on this one.

 > So I was wondering if any progress has been made with converting the LaTeX
 > source to SGML, which would be the "manual source" of the future, so to

  Like I said, I had a script that did a substantial portion of the
conversion from the documentation of almost a year ago to a simple
DTD, but it's pretty been relegated to the great bit bucket in the
sky.  
  There is no relation of the recent SGML-Tools conversation and the
Python documentation, though I'd definately be interested in using
SGML-Tools 1.1+ (DocBook & DSSSL) if we use the DocBook DTD.

 > Basically, I would imagine I'm not the only person who's keen to see the
 > SGML documentation at some point, so if anyone could let me - and

  You're not the only one.  I'm just way to busy to devote any
additional time myself at this point.
  If anyone is interested in converting the documentation to DocBook
3.x or DocBook-XML 1.0, I'd like to see a "conversion plan" which
explains how you intend to map the LaTeX markup to *ML markup.
  I'd also be very interested in seeing alternate DTDs that are
targeted more tightly for these sorts of documents, possibly specific
to this particular documentation set.  I am very concerned about
actually authoring in DocBook.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake@acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
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