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This documentation is written in XML.
Basically, a Python program (makedoc.py) is used to parse the xml
source files, and generate a formatted output in another format.
There are already several tools already available which can do this,
among them sgmltools, which is based on docbook.
So you might wonder: why did I write my own doc generator?
Well, there are several reasons:
1 - it was a good excuse to write Python code. I'm very interested
in Python but could not find anything to do with it until I
realize it could help me at generating documentation.
2 - docbook is too big for me to learn. I do not have time nor
motivation to learn such a complex DTD. Besides, when I write
docs, I like to concentrate on the contents. The "DTD" (a very
small one indeed) I use is *really* basic, so writting docs is
really an easy and quick task for me.
3 - sgmltools was not flexible enough for me. Indeed, I use my little
doc generator to create some of the pages of http://www.ufoot.org.
Therefore I the parser to be able to generate pages with a given
look and feel, and for instance I do not like the "prev" and "next"
buttons generated on HTML pages by sgmltools. Rather than wasting
time trying to get rid of those, I just wrote my own simple
generator.
4 - I love programming. Just can't help it. I feel frustrated when
I use a ready-to-use product 8-)
The following formats can be generated:
- html : browsable doc
- ps : printable doc (an intermediate dvi file is also available)
- pdf : printable doc for Microsoft platforms, with poor ps support
- txt : universal reference, readable on *any* computer
- man : doc for die-hard man-page users =8-)
- texi : texinfo doc (the GNU projet documentation format)
- php3 : what I upload on http://www.ufoot.org
Note that the parser currently uses xmllib, which is shipped with
Python 1.5.2 but is marked as deprecated in Python 2.x. I don't feel
the need to upgrade my scripts since Python 2.x is not as common as
Python 1.5.2 yet, and besides I don't really enjoy touching code
when it already works...
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