[Qgis-community-team] help with manual revision

[Otto Dassau]

Hi,

On Tue, 27 May 2008 10:04:34 +0200
Werner Macho <werner.macho at gmail.com> wrote:

> hi all again!
> 
> I followed Ottos advices and here are ma remarks:
> > - MiKTEX -> http://miktex.org/ (TeX implementation for Windows)
> > - MSYS -> http://www.mingw.org/msys.shtml (Minimal Bourne Shell)
> > - ImageMagick ->
> > http://www.imagemagick.org/script/binary-releases.php#windows
> >   (Image editing tools (especially convert)) 
> > - Ghostscript and Ghostview -> http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/
> >   (Viewer for EPS files)
> >   
> Everything fine beside MSYS. On sourceforge page of msys (MinGW) I only 
> found a tar.bz2 (gz?) which is not really comfortable under Windows.
> I just installed a probably older but easier version from here:
> http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/gnu/mingw/MSYS-1.0.11-2004.04.30-1.exe
> And i think I've to admit that I have also MinGW installed for other 
> purposes..

I checked with the version used for GRASS and your suggested MSYS is exactly
what others currently use as well. I added your link to the wiki to have an .exe
for download so it is easier to find (please read below).

> Everything else works fine as described by Otto.
> > here the procedure after installation to compile and create a PDF:
> >
> > - start MSYS (Linux Shell)
> > - change into the qgis user_guide directory (cd ...)
> > - type 'make' (MiKTEX then installs a lot of additional packages from the
> >   internet and at least for me one package (floatflt.sty) was not available.
> >   simply  clicking return I could skip some other "minor" errors, that also
> >   occur under  linux.  
> > - Use Yap (DVI viewer inside of MiKTEX) for the .dvi output under Windows 
> > - Convert user_guide.dvi to PDF with dvipdfm.exe in MSYS Shell
> I'm a long Term Linux user - and I know what "cd" and "ls" is .. but 
> first I found out that it is net easy for a windows user to find out 
> where the LaTeX files are (here it is /g/qgis_manual/qgis_user) and to 
> be honest .. the average windows user will have difficulties to realise 
> that g: is /g in msys

ok, maybe we should describe it with fix pathes as an example. Then people can
just do copy paste using MSYS and get used to it? (please read below)

> also there are still a lot of warnings (which could be cleaned out 
> easily like use caption instead of caption2 in qgis_style.sty on line 
> 48) and unfortunately a few real ERRORS which are not easy for me to 
> find out whats happening.
> ("C:\Programme\MiKTeX 2.7\tex\latex\subfigure\subfigure.sty"
> ****************************************
> * Local config file subfigure.cfg used *
> ****************************************
> ("C:\Programme\MiKTeX 2.7\tex\latex\subfigure\subfigure.cfg"))
> ("C:\Programme\MiKTeX 2.7\tex\latex\placeins\placeins.sty") (bibtopic.sty)
> ("C:\Programme\MiKTeX 2.7\tex\latex\tools\xspace.sty")
> ! Undefined control sequence.
> \@fileswith at pti@ns ...served at b \reserved at a ,\@nil
>                                                   ,}\fi \reserved at a
> l.211
>   
> ?

this also happens under linux since (at least debian) switched to livetex
after sarge/etch? I don't know how to fix this either at the moment.

> )
> Runaway definition?
> ->\@onefilewithoptions hyperref[bookmarks=true, bookmarksnumbered=fal\ETC.
> ! File ended while scanning definition of \reserved at a.
> <inserted text>
>                 }
> l.6
>    
> ?
> 
> but two times enter compiles the manual .. with 1 error..
> 
> Maybe someone understand whats wrong here? I found out that in 
> qgis_user.sty there are a lot of "empty lines" at the end - if you 
> delete them there are much more errors like that.. And I think cleaning 
> out this error means a fine compile also under MikTeX without the 
> Makefile (having prepared the .eps files before)
> 
> to combine what I'd like to say (thanks for reading until now):
> TexMaker and MikTeX under windows are such beautiful programs and 
> although I use and like Linux (and all flavours of Unix) very much, I 
> also understand people using _only_ windows (like here at work I also 
> have only Windows)
> Without any baisc knowledge of *NIX filestrucure and some basic commands 
> it is unfortunately not possible to compile the manual on windows. And I 
> think that lead us to the fact that we kind of "lock out" windows users 
> in helping what we certainly don't want to.
> I'm still on the point that installing MikTeX and TeXmaker should be far 
> enough to burden for a windows user. And I also think all Warnings and 
> Errors could be cleaned out of the .tex files that they compile fluently 
> under MikTeX.
> The only thing is that I still have no suggestion for converting all 
> pictures to .eps.

I have no experience with pdflatex, but as suggested by Jürgen this could do the
trick. And as far as I see, pdflatex.exe is also available in MikTeX - right?
The only "no-go" for me would be to store all .eps files in svn, because the
folder finalpix is currently 86MB - far to much I think.

> Beside that i agree with the comfort of having a Makefile but as already >
> said - thats a little too OS specific .. And I guess having a running 
> MikTeX with TexMaker means also a running Kile under Linux (haven't 
> tested it yet)

As far as I see, if we migrate to pdflatex we could still use Makefiles if
we like, or not? 

> All in all I'm not the man who makes decisions - I only described my 
> experiences with windows here (and I know a lot of people using windows 
> and already have a feeling for how they think). Hope my 2c help in any way.
> And just as a note here I myself can comfortably live with a Makefile 
> but think about probably locking out a lot of helping hands.

Ok, I propose we try to migrate to pdflatex and start with Windows, because it
will be easier to adapt it to linux and mac? Werner could you make some tests
under Windows and tell us, if it improves the building and what the procedure
is?

thanks a lot
  Otto

> best regards
> 
> Werner