[haiku] Re: BePDF documentation


Humdinger wrote:



>So, the question I'd like to put forward is, do we
>
>a) keep the PDF format?
>a1) keep the "source" in Gobe format?
>a2) convert the "source" to OpenOffice so it's editable for everyone, just not (yet?) under Haiku? 
>b) scrap the PDF and go XHTML like the rest of the docu?
>c) have a better idea?
>
>The main problem with going HTML is the slooow startup of our default Firefox. >Is NetSurf far along enough to be Haiku's fast docu viewer (maybe even as a further stripped down version)? 


a) For output it's fine, for source no.
a1) No.
a2) No (see below).
b) Yes.
c) No.


I'd keep the document *source* in XHTML.
XHTML being XML based is both human and machine readable. It can also be edited in anything - you don't need a special editor for it. XHTML is also based on strict rules, this makes it easier to check for format errors and to convert to other formats.
At work we use a dedicated app for documentation and it produces XML. We then take that and convert it into html and pdf. 

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Why not use Open Office?
Well for a start it's not usable on Haiku, making it of rather limited use...
If you plan on producing a big PDF I expect you'll run into a lot of problems with a word processor. They are not designed for big documents and are generally not up to the job - MS Word certainly isn't.
I've never been a big fan of OO, I don't know about more recent versions but it used to be slow and had an absolutely colossal memory footprint, I can't even begin to comprehend why a word processor would require 200MB of RAM. I can remember back to when it used to take 5 minutes just to start - yes, it really was that slow.
As for Gobe, If you try to edit a big doc you'll soon find the problem that it crashes with large docs (Gobe themselves confirmed this to me when I reported it - quite some time ago...). 

Anyway just my er 0.2 cents (the pound isn't doing so well these days).


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BTW if you haven't see it:

http://www.osnews.com/story/20651/BeGeistert_019_Alphaville
There's a few more names on the pics now, if you want to know who's doing Haiku you'll see several of them on the very last picture on page 6. 


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Nicholas Blachford
nicholas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.blachford.info
"Does it give loads of powaa for little wonga and overclock like a mutha?" - dizietsma

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