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From: Taco Hoekwater <taco@elvenkind.com>
To: mailing list for ConTeXt users <ntg-context@ntg.nl>
Cc: Yatskovsky <yatskovsky@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Software manual template request
Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:03:15 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <47F1DE33.5030201@elvenkind.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0803311124530.10612@nqv-yncgbc>

Aditya Mahajan wrote:
> On Mon, 31 Mar 2008, Vyatcheslav Yatskovsky wrote:
> 
>> Hello,
>>
>> Does anyone has a template for software manual? I have vague notion
>> about how it should look like, but, well,  I'll know when I see it.
>> ;o) Most modern manuals have common design elements; I wish I had
>> an environment which captures the spirit.
>>
>> Needless to say, untouched LuaTex envinroment gives too much academic look.
>>
>> Can anyone kindly suggest something?
> 
> Most of the manuals of GNU software are written using texinfo. The 
> advantage is that it is easy to get HTML and info output. There is also 
> docbook, which offers some features for documenting code.
> 
> Both of them have fairly simple look, so it should be easy to create a 
> ConTeXt module for them.

If anybody knows of a API documentation style that can handle functions
that both take variable arguments as well as return variable arguments,
I am very interested in that. For example, there is a the luatex lua
function tex.print, and it accepts the following types of calls:

   tex.print("string", ... )  -- multiple string args are possilbe
   tex.print(number, "string", ... ) -- number is catcode table

And this is not a complex function at all. Here is kpse.find_file:

   f = kpse.find_file("filename")
   f = kpse.find_file("filename", 'ftype')
   f = kpse.find_file("filename", mustexist)
   f = kpse.find_file("filename", 'ftype', mustexist)
   f = kpse.find_file("filename", 'ftype', dpi)

* "filename" must be a string, otherwise an error is generated
* 'ftype'    must be one specific value from an enumeration list,
              default "tex"
* mustexist  must be a boolean, default false
* dpi        must be a number, and only applies if 'ftype' is
              'pk', 'gf', or 'bitmap font'. It is the "bitmap size".

* f          can either become a string, or nil

It is quite hard to find a suitable documentation style for such
functions.

Best wishes,
Taco
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  reply	other threads:[~2008-04-01  7:03 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
     [not found] <mailman.3960.1206900497.4340.ntg-context@ntg.nl>
2008-03-30 23:53 ` Vyatcheslav Yatskovsky
2008-03-31 15:27   ` Aditya Mahajan
2008-04-01  7:03     ` Taco Hoekwater [this message]
2008-04-01  8:18       ` luigi scarso

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