Re: [boost] Do we need BoostBook?

Subject: Re: [boost] Do we need BoostBook?
From: Paul A. Bristow (pbristow_at_[hidden])
Date: 2014-12-06 11:57:18

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Boost [mailto:boost-bounces_at_[hidden]] On Behalf Of Vladimir Prus
> Sent: 06 December 2014 06:54
> To: boost_at_[hidden]
> Subject: Re: [boost] Do we need BoostBook?
> 
> On 12/06/2014 02:41 AM, Robert Ramey wrote:
> > Vladimir Prus-3 wrote
> >> As heretic as it sounds, do we get any benefits from BoostBook? It's
> >> a complex vocabulary, with complex toolchain, and while PDF
> >> generation sounded nice 10 years ago, printing HTML into PDF is a
> >> viable option these days - and nobody would want to print entire
> >> Boost documentation anyway?
> >>
> >> Thoughts?

The current toolchain from Quickbook via Boostbook and Doxygen may not be ideal
(it's certainly tediously slow for large libraries like Boost.Math) but it's the
best we have unless someone is going to start from scratch and make something
*much* better.  

Although not universally like, I believe the results can be better than other
docs build systems.   Many of those critical of the  results (and tedium), are
dealing with small libraries whose documentation is almost trivial in comparison
with the bigger libraries.  

And the prospect of converting existing documentation to any new/other system
isn't appealing :-(

Indexes and googling often finds what you want to know, but when it fails, I
find the PDF format *is* very useful - mainly because one can search the *whole*
documentation.  You can even read it in airline mode on your portable computing
device ;-)

So it's the devil we know and he's always better...

Paul

---
Paul A. Bristow
Prizet Farmhouse
Kendal UK LA8 8AB
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