Re: [Boost-docs] How was the documentation built, compiled from some source format or written in HTML?

Subject: Re: [Boost-docs] How was the documentation built, compiled from some source format or written in HTML?
From: Daniel James (daniel_james_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-07-30 19:51:17

On 30/07/2008, xiaq <xiaqqaix_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Hi all,
>   I'm a member of a boost documentation translation team, and I wanted
>  to figure out how the original boost documentation was built. It seems
>  that they were written in HTML by hand 'cause some parts of the
>  documentation have different stylesheets.

Different libraries write their documentation in different ways. Some
use handwritten html. Some use boostbook, which is an extended version
of docbook. Some use quickbook which is a wiki-like documentation
format which translates to boostbook (quickbook documentation
generally has a '.qbk' extension). Doxygen is also used by several
libraries for generating their reference documentation. And there's a
few libraries which use python docutils (the source has an .rst
extension).

The documentation source is usually stored in the libraries' 'doc'
directory, e.g. for iostreams you can find hand-written html at
'libs/iostreams/doc'. And if the documentation needs to built there
should a Jamfile containing the build instructions.

Building documentation can be complicated. So if you want to work on a
particular library, ask about it here and we'll try to help you get
started.

Daniel