World: r3wp

The REBOL MakeDoc Page

 - Updated 27-Jan-2005 ... /  "The MakeDoc Standardization Project" 
 - Updated 26-Jan-2005 ... Is there any activity left regarding those 
 project ?

At work, we use those formats intensively: for project docs, for 
official documents, even for generating psychotechnical tests skelettons 
in XML dialects... So it would be great if a standadization could 
take place, keeping the best of the two worlds MD2 and MDP.

hmm, I wonder how do you aproach printing .... I use Chris' online 
make-doc version at ross-gill.com, and it has strange metrics with 
IE, not to mention Mozilla - it screwes it up (if I want to have 
it with background) ... but maybe the cause is my pdf printer driver 
...

Well, I didn't feel any trouble using PDF-factory and printing to 
it. The process of savinf documents is really simple. Write the doc 
(MD2 or MDP) / generate HTML / print to the PDF-generator / save 
the PDF and publish doc :-)

savinf > saving

I just did not get satisfactory enough result .... but I wanted to 
print with background ...

how did you did it ? did you set the background using the css style 
sheet, or did you address it right into the html code ?

stylesheet imo .... but the result was bad in mozilla ...

In the same area, there is also my NicomDoc: http://home.tiscali.dk/john.niclasen/nicomdoc/

I think, my approach has some advantages over both MD2 and MDP. I 
convert to/from an internal XML-kind of format called RebXML, which 
is much easier to work with, when making importers/exporters to different 
formats. RebXML is defined here: http://home.tiscali.dk/john.niclasen/rebxml/

I'm not sure, if anyone else found my ideas to be usefull, when I 
talked about it here half a year ago, and I haven't have much time 
to do more with NicomDoc, but it's not a dead project.

And don't let the XML part acare you away, it's NOT XML, as you know 
it, just the good thoughts from XML. RebXML is based on blocks, words 
and strings.

acare = scare

I'm sure your format has a lot of possibilities. FYI, there's a little 
compare study  published on http://rebolfrance.info/articles/gendoc_avec_rebol
. But a few years ago, I had to make a choice on the format to use, 
and it became MDP (MD2 then when it was released).

I find the idea of using simple tags to generate doc a improvement 
for professionals. Every time I have to use the m$ word, I'm stuck 
into format problems and i spend more time find a solution to it 
than concentrating on the core of my text. But i guess this is a 
known complaint :-)

Printing: With the COM stuff now, I'm going to do a MS Word emitter 
for MDP. Than this shouldn't be a problem.

XML: Well, I choose to use a block based intermediate format coming 
from the MDP parser. It's because you can handle it the Rebol style 
and it makes writing a one-pass emitter quite easy.

standardization: Yep, I agree. But seems like we have to many options, 
different thinkings and preferences, to many forks etc. I tried it 
several times but no luck. I think it won't happen, and I don't spend 
any more time on this standardization stuff. It needs people to push 
it and without a group wanting this it won't happen.

Too bad :(

But keeping standardization on the side, are they any ideas of working 
on compatibility ? I mean: doc developped under MDP should be readable 
under MD2, for example. Or is the workgroup totally dead ? (in which 
case it should be announce on rebol.net... i think).

workgroup has not set any timeframes etc.

dead or no, it depends upon ppl's needs - if noone needs such standardisation, 
it will not happen ...

imo we need new rebol blood and we should try (I am trying :-) to 
recruit new blood to join us :-) every developer can help ...

u mean for this WG ?

not only ...

About new blood... this is a conversation which appears regularly 
within the french rebol community; How make rebol more popular ... 
but this is becoming off-topic, perhaps we should move to... well, 
to where ? :-)

French community is "strange" - it is very cool and active, yet it 
creates barrier for rebol adoption a bit - many of good materials 
are not in english. We help short talk about it with Cyphre - if 
rebol.cz should be czech only, or something like rebolforces, so 
in english ... (or both :-)

compatibility: MDP should be 100% MD compatible. I'm not sure about 
MD2 but if you find any differences let me know.

Yes, Pekr. u're right ! Its called language barrier :-)

No. No joking now... For lot of french taking ppl, another language 
than french is on the border of the unbiliefable. But isn't so also 
for the native english talking ppl ?

We started in february this year with the "REBOL Documentation Project" 
initiative with also this goal into our vision: let's make REBOL 
popular by translating doc ! There's a LOT of high value articles 
and studies abour REBOL out there... lonely in english ... (Ladislav 
:-) ) or in french ... let's translate it ! let's publish it !

For now, we succeed a bit into getting good french documentation. 
But it can be still beter ! OK, i can admit, i did not deploy a lot 
of effort to "recruit' english-speeking author for publishing on 
our website ... Yet, it stays open ! Come on in ! Do YOU have something 
to say about REBOl ? Do you want to make it publicly accessible ? 
We need YOU ! Contact me and get on the 'REBOL Documentation Project' 
!

OK... Should we create a new "REBOL Documentation Project" aka "REBDocProj" 
group ?

I should note i'm Belgian, not French :-))

Robert: well, i didn't go into your latest version, but is the table 
handling not a compatibility problem? i mean =row against || text 
| text ...

Tables: Yes, I didn't yet implemented it. But shouldn't be that hard 
to do.

I thought, for several times, to rewrite the MDP parser to use Garbriele's 
compile-rules function. Should make the parser simpler and more compact. 
Further I could design it in a way to handle the different approaches 
better.

But this needs quite a lot of time...

I don't find URL support as described in http://www.rebol.net/docs/makedoc/md1.html#section-5.5
 in the released makeDoc version accessible at http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/view-script.r?script=makedoc2.r
   Rambo 488 raised for this.

that url directive only works if it's on the left margin.

Hi Graham,  this version ignores my =url request and look at the 
source http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/view-script.r?script=makedoc2.r
  I can't find any URL text string in that source.

I think this version does not support =url at any column position.

The web page created by makedoc2.r is too wide for my screen. How 
can I make the lines wrap at the right border of the window so that 
when the window size is changed the line breaks are automatically 
adjusted?

IIRC it's some CSS style/tag named "float"... but not sure, out of 
my head.

Louis:  simplest solution - change width of table (can be percents) 
- or delete it 

<table width="660" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" border="0"> to 
<table cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" border="0">

Robert and Alek_K, thanks for responding. Deleting the table altogether 
solved the problem. Thanks!

For makedoc2.r input log 488 on Rambo which has morphed to Reviewed 
log 3955, this change deck provides =url support for anyone who wants 
it.  

The line changes are all inserts and the line number is the download 
version from the script library as of a few minutes ago

-ins 136

        | "url" url

-ins 169 


url: [
    some space copy text thru newline (
        emit url parse/all text " "
    )
]


-ins 311 

            url         [emit-url doc/2]


-ins 512

emit-url: func [spec] [
    emit [reduce {<a href="} spec/1 {">} skip spec 1 </a><p>]
]

I'm running into that issue.  Is there another way to do URLs in 
MakeDoc2 besides the supposed =url ?

Plain html?

Or patching :)

We'll see if I have any luck trying to patch it, volker

Where is the source, what do you need? IIRC i patched it once, so 
i may remember where to place code.

It looks like MikeL has it above this.  I'll just make those changes 
and confirm it