> I'm wondering, how many people use format 3 (Windows or
gnome help)?
> If the answer turns out to be, hardly any, that might make a
> difference to my thinking on the best base format for the manual
> (currently XML).
I think here the people who uses Gretl in windows does not use much the chm
manual. We have also some linux users all of them using kde instead of gnome.
This brings back a thought Allin and I shared in a private message a few
weeks ago. My personal opinion is that, certainly in the long run but
perhaps even now, it's best to split the documentation in two, roughly
corresponding to a "reference manual" and a "user manual", like eg
TSP has
always had.
I agree with Jack on this. Really if I remember the way I learnt about Gretl,
when I knew her, firstly I took a look at the menus and then I printed the pdf
manual. Since this time, I almost exclusively use the help at the GUI "help"
item.
Before I knew Gretl (and R) I used to work in RATS. The RATS manuals (version
5) are also set up in two volumes, firstly the "User's guide" including a
detailed information of the main commands and procedures with the necessary
formulas, and then the "Reference manual", listing in alphabetical order all
the commands with their parameters, etc. May be that
As a translator of Gretl, I thought I should translate the help files
(accesible through the "help" menu item) and the manual, so I did it.
The first time I translated the "help" files, they were almost completely
ASCII text, so this was easy to do. The manual was in XML,
I must say that I didn't know anything about XML, but I could translate de
manual without much problem (with the help of Allin, of course). Now the XML
code generates the help files and the manual, so it is much more complicated.
I don't know whether the translator's life will be better if we have the two
manuals separated, as I suposse we will want to maintain the possibility of
printing a (well formatted) command reference also, so we need the XML
format. But I think it will be easier for us to have a "User's guide" in
Latex, so we can treat separately at least this part of the documentation, and
probaly we have this part more updated.
--
Ignacio Díaz-Emparanza
Dpto. de Economía Aplicada III (Econometría y Estadística)
UPV-EHU
http://www.bl.ehu.es/~etpdihei/