[Ardour-Users] best of both worlds

[m.eik michalke]

hello tim,

am Montag, 27. August 2007 02:27 schrieb Tim Mayberry:
> > i was wondering who's in charge of the manual? the contribution draft
> > could use some information whom to contact, after all ;-)
>
> There is no particular person in charge of the manual, as it is
> located in the source code repository any contribution needs to go via
> someone with commit access.

i see. wouldn't it help if someone felt personally responsible for it?

> There is already an issue in the bug tracker about the contribution
> section(1463) but I'll add contact details to it today.

yes, i'd think that the contribution issue should be of some priority, for 
obvious reasons...

> >  o http://ardour.org/node/1188
>
> That looks like what you would get if you processed the manual without
> "chunking" it into separate pages using xsl and saving it to a pdf in
> a browser. Setting up a make target to build the manual so that it was
> just one big html page is very easy to do if people want that.

well, it seems like a pragmatic hack, but didn't meet my "aesthetic 
requirements", so to say... ;-) that's why i TeXed it, and if pdf export is 
going to be available, it should definitely look better than a browser 
rendered web page, if i'm concerned.

> > as long as creating pdf from docbook is not implemented, i'm offering to
> > maintain this pdf version, if someone informs me about changes somehow.
> > and given that anyone finds this as useful as i do...
>
> A pdf version should not need to be maintained,

you're absolutely right ;-) 

> it should just be generated from the docbook source and any help
> implementing it would be appreciated but it isn't a priority(at least for
> me)

in case i didn't make myself clear enough: i consider this pdf as a temporary 
workaround myself. i totally agree that there should be a way to generate it 
automatically from the docbook files. i just did it for myself and thought 
others might eventually find the result useful, too. [it was a wonderful 
opportunity to explore some new LyX features...] from what i found in the 
mailing list archives, a pdf manual is thought of since about 2004, so some 
voluntary "inbetween maintainance" wouldn't hurt, me thinks ;-)

i'm not so familiar with docbook as of now, but that again seems a worthwhile 
cause to get a little more involved, as my time allows for it. i had that 
back in mind when i started, since in theory LyX is capable of docbook 
handling (sgml & xml) as well, though it's painfully undocumented (the 
term "docbook" doesn't even appear in the extended user guide). that's what i 
meant by "best of both worlds" in the first place, actually, but i must have 
lost track...

well, for the learning experience i think i'll get into this anyway 
(LyX<->docbook) ;-)

> It is easy to see what changes have occurred to the manual using
> subversion.

ok, i'll keep an eye on that.

> > i have some additional questions and suggestions to make, but first i'd
> > like to learn who's to address :o) and of course, i'm open to suggestions
> > as well.
>
> I'd say the developer list is the best place for that.

i tried the #ardour channel lately. do i have to join the developers list for 
asking there? the most important question i still have is about the manual's 
license, if it has any. ben powers provides a fine tutorial on ardour, 
licensed cc-by-nc-sa 3.0:
 o http://www.out-of-order.ca/tutorials/ardour/
so theoretically it would be no problem to include his efforts in parts in the 
manual. but i can't find any license information, which defaults to "all 
rights reserved", so at least the "-sa" term can't be met. and i'm not the 
only one wondering (the mandriva package maintainer asked a few days ago in 
the forum; i can't give you the url since ardour.org is currently offline, as 
it seems).

in the meantime, if it's ok with the developers and since some users think 
it's nice to have, i'd like to know if the pdf file can be made available 
outside this mailing list. someone could announce it in the forum, you could 
upload it to the ftp server or whatever. it's all ok with me.


viele gruesse :: m.eik

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