On 7/23/2013 2:23 AM, Borden wrote:
On Sunday, 14 July 2013 at 20:35:45 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
3. HTML, PDF, Ebook, and CHM outputs are generated from Ddoc.
Walter, with respect, I know you're too smart to be saying something silly like
this. Surely you know that ebooks and CHM are specially-compiled HTML files. To
imply that DDoc, and not HTML, is the common denominator between these outputs
brings me to the acme of frustration as I have said over and over again that, at
the very least, ebooks depend upon good HTML output.
It's true that they are based on HTML output. However, and this is a big
however, they need significantly different HTML output than one puts on a web
site. This is currently accomplished by changing the macro definitions that Ddoc
uses, and by carefully recoding the Ddoc source to use those macros. While
generating ebooks is often billed as "just pipe your website HTML through our
converter program!" the reality is that you'll get more or less utter garbage if
you try that.
I've published several ebooks that also exist as web pages, so I'm familiar with
the process.
To this end, I have tried for months to help bring dlang.org up to HTML 5
standard if, for no other end, to be able to compile the spec into an epub
format. I even toed the github waters by submitting a trivially simple PR which,
for the past months, has gone completely ignored.
I assume this one is it?
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/320
I posted a response. (But in general, PR's that are flagged as "We can’t
automatically merge this pull request" tend to not get much attention. Despite
that, we can and should do better.)
Can you please make some PR's which illustrate your work in converting it to
HTML 5?
In the meantime, my offers on help with other dlang.org PRs have also gone
ignored. The thread in which I keep offering to help (Dlang spec rewrite) has
gone ignored. To argue that contributions are not languishing or that volunteers
are not being ignored necessarily means that I do not exist.
http://forum.dlang.org/post/ypcykidvradkrhnob...@forum.dlang.org
has quite a few responses; more than most threads.
If I have learnt one thing in the past few months, it is that any attempt to
dispute using DDoc to program an entire website is a fool's exercise. Despite
vocal objections from the plebian masses, the DDoc architects and maintainers
will stubbornly defend its usefulness. One can hardly blame them: wouldn't any
of us defend code that we had carefully designed or write?
Therefore, dlang.org will stay, for better or worse, in DDoc. It's not worth
arguing. As for willing contributors, it seems to me that the maintainers have
an agenda to which they are adhering. Contributions focussed on other areas are
diversions.
Of course we have an agenda :-)
The arguments were (I thought) well laid out in that thread and responded to.
Reasonable people can disagree - it doesn't mean that one side is irrational.
