[boost] Re: Reference documentation

From: Kevin S. Van Horn (Kevin.VanHorn_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-10-29 16:07:55

As I see it, the advantages of DocBook are

1. Well-established standard tool (same advantage applies to LaTex, but 
   not to home-grown XML or the ReStructuredText Dave mentioned).

2. Readily-available tools to convert to both HTML (for Web presentation) 
   and Tex/postscript/PDF (for printed documentation).

   - Whether or not it is easy to do this conversion on platforms other
     than Unix isn't a big deal, as it only has to be done once for each
     release, and then the converted forms can be distributed as part of
     the Boost package.

   - The lack of a reasonable printed form for Boost documentation has 
     always been an irritating problem.

3. The focus is on structure, not presentation.  This makes it much more 
   suitable for automatic processing to extracting indices and other 
   information from the documentation.  For example, one could 
   automatically generate the Concepts Dictionary that I've mentioned in 
   the past.

I think that (2) and (3) are especially important.