[Openmcl-devel] ccl manual (was Re: trace on recursive functions)

[Gary Byers]

A lot of this is a question of what you're comfortable with (and with
what tools are available to make you more comfortable); most markup
languages are capable of producing (at least) HTML and PDF output, and
you can probably get .info output if you're willing to jump through 0
or more hoops.  To the extent that that's true, it seems that the
important issues involve ease of use while creating and modifying content.

That said, we switched from texinfo to DocBook for the CCL documentation
a few years ago, and - as many bad things as we can say about DocBook -
I think that that was a fairly big step forward: we now groan a bit
at the thought of editing documentation, but that's better than the
abject terror that that thought used to evoke.

YMMV; I know people who like texinfo and are apparently very productive
while using it.

I don't know of any tools for editing texinfo source other than the
texinfo mode in Emacs, so a lot of what one thinks of texinfo probably
has to do with what one thinks of this mode, and that's ultimately a
matter of taste (or, possibly, the complete lack of it ...)  DocBook
and LaTeX generally offer more editing choices (Emacs modes,
standalone WYSIWYG editors), and that might increase the possibility
of finding something that you're comfortable with.



On Thu, 10 Dec 2009, Liam Healy wrote:

> Sorry to go a bit off-topic here, but I'm contemplating how to do
> documentation for projects of my own.  I too was put off by the
> complexity (and unfamiliarity) of docbook and its tools.  On the other
> hand, (La)TeX, though I'm very familiar with it, doesn't seem very
> oriented toward documentation and code.  Someone recommended texinfo
> to me; it is appealing in that it is made for documentation, is quite
> simple, and you can generate many different formats from it, including
> DocBook.   Has anyone tried it?  What are your experiences?
>
> Liam
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