From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.comp.tex.context/24183 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?J=E9r=F4me_Laurens?= Newsgroups: gmane.comp.tex.context Subject: What about dynamic documentation? Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 14:19:53 +0100 Message-ID: <1bbbbe0f95e365f76129a09c0e9f2841@u-bourgogne.fr> Reply-To: mailing list for ConTeXt users NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v623) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1133880468 473 80.91.229.2 (6 Dec 2005 14:47:48 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 14:47:48 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl Tue Dec 06 15:47:46 2005 Return-path: Original-Received: from ronja.vet.uu.nl ([131.211.172.88] helo=ronja.ntg.nl) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Eje3z-0001LI-N0 for gctc-ntg-context-518@m.gmane.org; Tue, 06 Dec 2005 15:45:03 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1AECF12872; Tue, 6 Dec 2005 15:45:03 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from ronja.ntg.nl ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (smtp.ntg.nl [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 01975-09-4; Tue, 6 Dec 2005 15:45:00 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from ronja.vet.uu.nl (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id B147612876; Tue, 6 Dec 2005 14:19:58 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id A8E8A12876 for ; Tue, 6 Dec 2005 14:19:56 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from ronja.ntg.nl ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (smtp.ntg.nl [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 00671-03 for ; Tue, 6 Dec 2005 14:19:55 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from haydn2002.u-bourgogne.fr (haydn2002.u-bourgogne.fr [193.50.50.62]) by ronja.ntg.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 95A6912871 for ; Tue, 6 Dec 2005 14:19:55 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from [193.50.49.80] (fermat.u-bourgogne.fr [193.50.49.80]) by haydn2002.u-bourgogne.fr (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id jB6DJspR006632 for ; Tue, 6 Dec 2005 14:19:54 +0100 Original-To: mailing list for ConTeXt users X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.623) X-Scanned-By: milter-limit/0.6.61 (haydn2002.u-bourgogne.fr [193.50.50.62]); Tue, 06 Dec 2005 14:19:54 +0100 X-Miltered: at haydn02.u-bourgogne.fr with ID 43958FFA.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at ntg.nl X-BeenThere: ntg-context@ntg.nl X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: mailing list for ConTeXt users List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl Errors-To: ntg-context-bounces@ntg.nl X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at ntg.nl Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.comp.tex.context:24183 Archived-At: Hi all, Is is extremely useful for a newbie as I am to have access to the manuals electronically. You just open the pdf and search to obtain what you need. In general, you end up with a command that you have to copy from the pdf then paste to your source file. Another solution is to use the text editor completion feature, which is available only once you know the correct command name, at least the beginning... What I am missing is a button in the pdf itself that would automagically insert the proper code in my source. To be more concrete, here is what could be done (on Mac OS X at least). 0 - Define a data model. 1 - For a reasonnable set of commands, define dedicated GUIs panels. 2 - Write a dedicated browser As there is a huge amount of "reasonnable" TeX and ConTeXt commands, it is -not- reasonnable to fine tune a dedicated GUI for each one. But with some perl I think it would be possible to turn for example the Quick References Manuals into a set of xml files, each one dedicated to its own command. If these files are just HTML forms (modulo the proper style and automagic filter), we have the GUI for free using a web browser. The communication between the browser and the text editor could come from SUBMIT. At least a "copy/paste" phase would be enough. I already have a custom web browser that can insert some text directly in a text editor (iTeXMac) It is based on Mac OS X WebKit. Which means that I will incorporate this browser directly into iTM, but this not the question so far. All this makes points 1 and 2 above acceptable IMHO. The problems come from point 0. I think a good thing would be to create a subsection of the context garden, or another wiki, gathering all the sources. The seed would come from the actual documentation with automagic scripts and people would update at will. Then people would be able to work on a local version using a web sucker. We can imagine searching facilities as well BTW, Sometimes it is necessary to have some output to understand the real effect of a command. This should enter into consideration. How does it sound?