RE: [boost] Re: JavaScript index?

From: Paul Mensonides (pmenso57_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-10-04 14:31:08

> -----Original Message-----
> From: boost-bounces_at_[hidden] 
> [mailto:boost-bounces_at_[hidden]] On Behalf Of David Abrahams

> > The documentation can be built during the build process on a client 
> > machine--which can be parametized by the particular user's 
> preferences--i.e.
> > there can be more than one available XSLT transformation.  
> There are 
> > always going to be people that prefer fancy versions and 
> people that 
> > prefer baseline versions, and there is no way to please 
> everybody at 
> > once without having multiple ways to view the same docs.
> 
> If you count PDF, we already have multiple ways.  There's no 
> way to please _everybody_, period.  I think we need to make 
> some judgement about what's a reasonable level of 
> accomodation and just stop there.
> I'm not sure if you were suggesting this, but IMHO asking 
> users to run a build process just to look at the 
> documentation would be a mistake.

I'm not suggesting that it be the *only* way.  What I'm suggesting is that we
have a midpoint transformation that isn't too fancy and PDF's for the website
and the distribution, but also provide the XML sources, a baseline XSLT
transformation source, a semi-fancy XSLT transformation source, and the tools
(i.e. scripts) to produce builds.  Over time, more transformations can be added
(if desired) for various purposes (such as generating plaintext, man pages, or
whatever).  Thus, there is no requirement on users, but the system is flexible
and open-ended and minimizes the impact of choices such as frames vs. no-frames,
script-based table of contents vs. not, underlined vs. non-underlined links,
color-coded source snippets vs. not, blue headings vs. black headings, etc.,
etc..

Regards,
Paul Mensonides