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.
Allin