> Karl Glazebrook responded: > > We did open source the PDL book many years with > the idea that people could improve it on CVS. One can > go in there right now if one is a PDL admin on > sourceforge and hack the latex.
That was part of my test/review comment tacked onto my wiki e-mail (now edited for clarity below). Rather than editing the current book, I think the important issue is how to generate and revise needed new content. That is where the wiki would come in. > A wiki might be a better approach though - neat idea. A recent article by P. Pouridas in the Mar/Apr 2006 IEEE Software pp.88-91 titled "Using Wikis in Software Development" discusses the use of wikis *and* has a table comparing several of the main Wiki engines. I took a look at the TWiki (built on Perl) engine and it has a lot of good stuff for PDL books writing (http://twiki.org): - page preview - page version control - access control lists - math formulas - syntax highlighting - tables - email notification - conflict detection and locking - WYSIWYG capability - full text searching - PDF export http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software has its own comparison table. > Is there a Latex to Wiki translator? What about a wiki to > PDF processor? It can output PDF files and there are several flavors of math mode plugins available including a LaTeXMode among others. See http://www.wikimatrix.org/wiki/TWiki:Math%20formulas for more info. If this could be set up on sourceforge.net then we could setup some outline structures for the tutorials, beginners book, and PDL book. Then the writing begins. A quick start on the book would be to cut-n-paste the current PDL book contents into a starting point for the new revision. Then people could pitch in as time and knowledge permit. > Karl > > On Jun 27, 2006, at 1:26 PM, Chris Marshall wrote: > > > > Chris Marshall wrote: > > > > How about using a wiki for writing the book? I noticed > > that the sourceforge page seems to have some sort of > > placeholder for a wiki. Use of a wiki would allow many > > contributors to generate the basic content of the book > > in their areas of experience/expertise. Then, the > > text could be wrapped up into the "book" itself with > > figures, editing and proofing. > > > > I would recommend that version control be used on the > > wiki and required sourceforge userID for submission (at > > a minimum). > > BTW: I've worked through chapters 1-5 of the "PDL Book" > > and except for some missing data sets and changes in > > slicing syntax, the text mostly worked for me. I have > > not been able to work through chapter 6 due to missing > > modules, other prerequisites, and a lack of time on my > > part.
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