Re: [Gretl-devel] help files

On Tue, 1 Mar 2016, Sven Schreiber wrote: > Personally I like PDF a lot, but all this non-standardization sounds > like it could be solved using web formats. So perhaps this would be an > argument to move the help output format to HTML5 + MathML + > WhateverML.... ? Given that Gretl already does a lot of XML maybe that > wouldn't even be too painful. Just thinking out loud... Sorry, but the pain would be too great! The real point is the input format. XML is a bit of a pain as input, but it's worth putting up with for the "reference" material, since it gives us the ability to generate TeX, plain text, HTML and our special mark-up for GUI help files, all nicely automated via XSL. For the extended text and math that's involved in the User's Guide, however, the input format just _has_ to be TeX (MathML is not human-editable). And we get excellent PDF from TeX, while any other output format (except for PostScript, RIP) would be hugely lossy.