Re: [boost] Do we need BoostBook?

Subject: Re: [boost] Do we need BoostBook?
From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2014-12-07 12:58:45

Mathias Gaunard-2 wrote
> On 05/12/2014 23:31, Vladimir Prus 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?
>>
> 
> I personally think it's a great toolchain and I also use it in other, 
> non-Boost projects.

+1

> Boostbook is just an extension of Docbook able to deal with C++ 
> programs. Docbook is one of the most well-known single-source authoring 
> solutions for technical documentation.

+1

> What would you suggest instead? The only compelling alternative I can 
> think of is reSt/Sphinx.

Personally I'm wary of jumping on the latest/greatest idea for things
like this.  I'll admit that part of it is just being old.  But another part
is
that many of these things are faddish ideas which may or may not
last.  I've seen lots of stuff come on big then fade away (java anyone?).

I always hated XML because of it's ridiculous verbosity, ambiguity
(should data be attributes or tags?), Funky add-ons (DTD ....), etc.

If the world was mine, we'd still be using nroff with every more
refined macro packages to generate html.  This could have done all that the
more
recent methods do - but without every one adding in his own language.
Anyway, the world is not mine (so you can all relax), and we're
stuck with that we currently have - which is good enough and not worth
spending
huge amount of effort to get refined the way we would like it.

Robert Ramey

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