Re: cont-enp.pdf on lulu

[Gerben Wierda <Gerben.Wierda@rna.nl>]

On Jul 28, 2008, at 10:36 PM, Hans Hagen wrote:

> Gerben Wierda wrote:
>
>> Somehow, this might be applied to ConTeXt I think ;-). Three out of
>> four afaic...
>
> well, it's one reason why we have multiple smaller manuals (often made
> in sync with the specific feature)
>
> anyhow ... taco and i only have one livetime, 24h/day etc etc

As you know, I know what you are talking about. And it is important  
also to keep your cups from running over if we want ConTeXt to succeed.

> currently we spend quite some time on luatex/mp/mkiv (if not we  
> could as
> well stop using tex in the near future) alongside our regular jobs ...

I was wondering if you already know what you would have to use if not  
TeX. Is there an alternative at all?

> we simply have not much more time available ... on the other hand, we
> don't intend to stop soon, so eventually ...
>
> btw, quite some documentation about latex is *not* written by the
> author(s) so it's not entirely fair to expect that taco and i write  
> all
> of it -)

But the initial manual (as Knuth said) is different from overview  
books like Kopka & Daly etc.

Knuth wrote the TeXbook, the Metafont book.
Lamport wrote the initial LaTeX book
Packages for LaTeX like memoir come with a manual written by the  
authors.

There are 'combination'  manuals (Kopka etc) but they all are based on  
the availability of full initial manuals.

But apart from that, the most imporant thing is  that resources are  
scarce and you guys have limits we need to honour. I think we should  
find a way for you guys to go on and not get swamped by too much and  
thus we need to find a way to make your documentation work lighter (as  
obviously - for me - it does not get the attention it should).

So I would propose to set up a way that a group of others can maintain  
documentation. Your task would then be an editor's task: proofread,  
suggest changes and agree. Minor changes can be done by the editors.  
major changes go past you and Taco as editors-in-chief. Your OK  
promotes it to alpha. And something like a manual (book) needs to be  
part of it. This should be based on (imo) merging the content of the  
excursion and the manual. The editors should be able to start a  
compilation run. The result should be the 'work in progress' pdf that  
has a fixed location on the pragma site. So, what we initially need is  
some sort of svn repository with access by a limited group, a mailing  
list for that group only. An e-mail adress to send documentation  
suggestions to.

I am prepared to do some work on this (e.g. editor work).

G
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