Re: [boost] Review request: auto-index tool

Subject: Re: [boost] Review request: auto-index tool
From: Daniel James (dnljms_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-01-25 15:53:10

On 21 January 2011 12:13, John Maddock <boost.regex_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> I'm not sure if we're doing reviews of tools - we haven't in the past - but
> I thought it would be good to get feedback anyway...

It's some time since I tried using it so this isn't a proper review. I
think it will be a valuable addition to the documentation toolset and
should be ushered in without delay. The results that I've seen work
very well, from what I recall it wasn't too hard to use. It's based on
the docbook standard so it should integrate well with external tools.
The official docbook standard and implementation does seem a bit
underdeveloped, but that can't be helped and, as far as I can tell, is
unlikely to cause any real problems.

A lot of the focus seems to be on indexing doxygen based documentation
but it's also useful for indexing other boostbook and quickbook based
documentation. It's quite easy to extend quickbook with templates,
although when this is more established it might be worth building
support into the language. I'm also wondering if there any
improvements that could be made to boostbook, but that's something for
the future.

It would be nice to link to some more detailed documentation about the
docbook tags. The official documentation isn't great but at least it
fills in some information for anyone who wants to know more.

I don't understand why you don't xml encode '&', '<' and '>', it's
pretty simple to implement.

Daniel