On 17-2-2012 21:36, Marco van de Voort wrote: > On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 08:05:48PM +0100, Reinier Olislagers wrote: >>>> Chances of it being available on Windows, OSX, are not much higher than >>>> on Linux. Requiring it just to build documentation seems... excessive. >>> >>> I don't see why. >> >> I mentioned that because the Lazarus people seemed to manage with their >> lcl_build_docs (IIRC), which uses fpdoc to generate CHM files from XML >> source - either by using my Tex installation on Windows, or not >> requireing latex. > > fpdoc is a FPC package, and the RTL and FCL doc sets of FPC work with it > too. I understand.
> However, those are all documentation of sources. > > The latex manuals however are not XML. Editing latex is much more > confortable, and allows high quality PDF using a lot of the latex features, > not in the least the macro system. I know and see the point in using latex for that. (Especially since we have such nice reference documentation, with a maintainer of the toolchain and all... ) Sorry, I should have written my previous post a bit better, indicating I knew the reason for using latex as such. > The extra requirements are certainly a pain, but changing this would just > create a bigger pain. > > Moreover, documentation building is not exactly that the average user does > regularly (seeing that there are less than 10 patches for it per quarter), > so it doesn't make sense to optimize it. Agreed. > I do think it should at least be possible to do this on Windows. From a > philosophical perspective, FPC should not force a certain platform on people > wanting to be developers. ;) > My first latex-on-windows attempt was in '98, so be sure that I have been > waiting quite some time :) Installed miktex, but not a latex guru at all, so when the make bombs, I have no idea where the error originated... my install, the makefiles on Windows... > latex is already doable. fpdoc based docs already work, but not via the > make system. (IIRC calling fpdoc via createprocessex does work, since the > API limit is much higher than the shell limit). > > The commandline problems can be avoided via the project system, and on a > slightly longer term, maybe fpmake will allow to kill off the horrible > makefile of fpdocs. The project system being fppkg? Or fpdocmanager? > But even then, > tex4ht on Windows is still an unknown factor. But for now, one thing at a > time :-) Totally agreed. Thanks, Reinier -- _______________________________________________ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus