Hi Bill,
Can you send me a patch for the current version
of hbmake, with your fixes?
I never patched hbmake, only hbdoc and the fixes for hbdoc were for
DOS/Windows only tools which are fairly limited in scope. I was
hoping that someone would have answered your request in Dec for
input about using a more modern documentor such as robodoc or
natural doc.
I think the problem is not with the principal, but
rather with the fact that such move needs serious
conversion (and more) work to kick off and realize
in practice.
We can choose the best tools, but unless someone is
willing to contribute efforts into it, it's nothing
more than words.
I thought about adding a module to hbdoc to produce robodoc files.
However, when I looked at the document files, their format and
quality was inconsistent. Some of the better docs didn't have any of
the tags that hbdoc used. For example, none of the text files in
\harbour\doc\ have the $tag$ format and they contain quite useful
information. Most, but not all, of the text files in the en/ and es/
directories have $tag$ formats. To a lesser extent, the same is true
of the .prg and .c files.
Conversion to robodoc would be very nice. Even if it's
not perfect, it would be great. Later we can jump
into making the perfect, but currently the format is a
limiting factor IMO. Also, probably the most kind of
errors are typical and reoccurring, so maybe they could
be corrected (on a basic level), by the converter tool.
Some of the files have no more than the following information. This
isn't in the standard hbdoc format and while my changes handled this
OK; it's of very limited use.
* $Doc$
* $Description$ Debug function tests.
* Based on classes.prg
* $Requirement$ source\tools\stringp.prg
* source\rtl\objfunc.prg
* source\rtl\asort.prg
* $End$
Because of these little problems, I loaded the windows version of
the groff document processing packages and looked at the old macros
I used to use with UNIX System V. Those macros (man, me, ms, mm)
seem pretty dated to me now. Even the new mom macro didn't seem to
produce much improvement without a lot of effort. No wonder xHarbour
had such a cost overrun with their manual produced by Dr. Ziegler.
Yes, it's very nice docs.
If free (including updates) is important, someone
will have to contribute for another doc.
As it stands, your idea of moving hbdoc and hbmake out of the main
stream may be best. I might be able to make some small improvements
in hbdoc and hbmake, but I'm quite novice compared to the harbour
developers.
Don't underestimate your capabilities to volunteer.
hbmake / hbdoc are pretty much abandoned parts, so
even your smallest contribution is a valuable addition
to keep them alive and working.
Or robodoc conversion.. it would be great.
Brgds,
Viktor
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