[PlanetCCRMA] Any Spanish-speaking Planet CCRMA users out there?

[Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano]

On Thu, 2004-09-30 at 11:27, Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-09-29 at 18:35, Andrew Wilson wrote:
> > Just some comments from the sidelines.  I think the "official" linux
> > way of approaching this problem is to use docbook for all the
> > documentation.  This already has multi-language support and easily
> > generates output for html, pdf or whatever you want.

I have been reading up more on docbook. As far as I understand the
multi-language support is restricted to character sets and all that
stuff. I could not find anything pertinent to maintaining multiple
translations simultaneously and/or flagging of translated / untranslated
/ obsolete sections. Let me know if you know this to be a possibility. 

> > The layout of
> > the existing planet documentation is uite straight forward and
> > wouldn't be that difficult to convert.  The files are still text and
> > this would then open up access to all the various docbook tools out
> > there for indexing etc.  (Fernando: I you want to go this way, I'd
> > offer to do the initial conversion for you)
> 
> Docbook is definitely an option. I have to learn more about it. 
> 
> The only problem I see is one of automation (within docbook) for things
> like link generation and other stuff. For example, in the latex code I
> posted yesterday:
> 
> \item[\linkBaseAll{freqtweak}{\freqtweakver}]
> 
> "linkBaseAll" is a latex command that I created in the same latex file,
> part of the definition looks like this:
> 
> \newcommand{\linkBaseAll} [2]{#1-#2
> [\htmladdnormallink{7.3}{\rpmBaseSevenThree/#1-#2.rh73.ccrma.i386.rpm} |
> ... more deleted
> 
> It is a two argument command (the "[2]") and #1 and #2 inserts the
> arguments into the text. So, that simple original line is expanding
> through several layers of macros or commands ("\rpmBaseSevenThree" is
> also a command that I define that inserts the base url for all RH7.3
> base packages) to the full latex output, which is later translated to
> html. 
> 
> What you end up seeing in the web page is:
> 
> freqtweak-0.6.1-1 [7.3 | 
> 
> (with "7.3" being a highlighted link to the rpm)
> 
> I like this because I can define commands that make it easy to describe
> what I want without unnecessary verbosity. The other very important side
> effect is that something like a version number for a certain package is
> defined in one place and one place only. 
> 
> Is docbook capable of doing something similar? Or would I have to use
> external preprocessing to achieve similar results?

As far as I can tell from what I have read it is not capable to doing
macros or anything similar. So all the automation that I currently have
as a side effect of using latex2html would have to be supplied
externally somehow. 

I also spent a fair amount of time trying to find out more about
alternatives for latex -> html conversion without much luck. I believe
that hevea is still the only one that supports conditionals, but I don't
see newer versions that the one I tried a year and a half or more ago.

Apparently someone at some point wrote something to support ifthenelse
in latex2html but it would only work for booleans that are defined once
at the start of the process due to the way the translator works (which
would be our case, BTW). But there are no references other than a couple
of posts in the l2h mailing list...

Another (ridiculous?) option would be to write the whole thing as a, for
example, perl program, using one of the numerous html extension
packages. That would be very "programmer friendly" but not very "writer
friendly". 

I'll keep looking for options...
-- Fernando