[Live-demo] FW: IRC meeting to discuss RC3 and final releases of the liveDVD

[Hamish]

Hamish:
> > once you switch to machine-generated HTML it is not
> > easy to edit by hand ever again, or to quickly review
> > changes via a diff.
> > 
> > k.i.s.s. principle..

perhaps more eloquently,
 "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication"

Cameron:
> I think our Live DVD build process provides an excellent
> platform for developing of training material, and
> documentation and similar efforts for the education
> community, among others. This is what I'm hoping will be the
> focus of version 4 of the live DVD. - Quality
> documentation.
> 
> Many educators are not geeks, and are not going to get
> involved in creating documentation if it involves writing
> raw HTML.

this is a fair point.

> However, they would be fine creating documentation
> in familiar tools (like word, or OpenOffice). Hence I
> propose that we move toward using OpenOffice as the primary
> format, and convert to PDF or HTML from that format.

I write a lot of documentation, and to be free with my opinion
the idea of ever going back to openoffice/Word for that makes
me cringe.

A couple of good alternatives are ReStructuredText- an easy to
learn wiki-style markup for text files which magically converts
to nicely typeset PDF, and especially HTML,
  http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/rst/quickstart.html
(that tuorial doesn't begin to do it justice)

and if you want a consistent high-quality document with a
familar interface that anyone can use, there is simply no better
software than LyX,
  http://www.lyx.org
LyX->PDF is trivial; LyX->HTML via "elyxer", "l2h" or a number
of other methods.


But that is just my 2c. I think it would be very good to hear
from the people putting together the conference workshops re.
their needs, wants, and preferences. As I expect they will be
the main producers and consumers of this documentation, or at
least very well representative of that group.



regards,
Hamish

ps- LyX is the best thing since sliced bread :o)