[GRASS-dev] Re: GRASS documentation

Mon Nov 5 07:10:50 EST 2007

Michael Barton wrote:

> > 1. They must not contain tags or entities which are not understood by
> > the g.html2man script (tools/g.html2man/g.html2man).
> 
> Can you or someone specify what these are?

>From a brief look at the g.html2man source, the following all appear
to be understood to some extent:

<A> <B> <BLINK> <BODY> <BR> <CODE> <DD> <DL> <DT> <EM> <H2> <H3> <H4>
<HEAD> <HEADER> <HR> <I> <IMG> <LI> <OL> <P> <PRE> <SUP> <TABLE> <TD>
<TH> <TITLE> <TR> <UL>

However, g.html2man just uses regexp matching; it doesn't include a
proper HTML parser. Consequently, there will be other restrictions on
the precise format, e.g. I wouldn't expect line breaks between
attributes to work.

> > 2. Any portions which are not modified must not be re-formatted during
> > the editing process, as this will make the output from "cvs diff"
> > useless.
> 
> Maybe one way to do this is to work with a copy of the description.html
> file, then use a simple text editor to cut out the edited/enhanced section
> and paste it into the original--leaving other areas untouched.
> 
> However, any significant changes, including adding images, could put a bunch
> of stuff into a cvs diff.

If there are many "genuine" changes, then you would expect to see a
substantial diff. The point is that changes shouldn't result in excess
diff output because unchanged sections have been reformatted (or
rather, regenerated) by the editor.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>