Re: [PATCH 0/5] Fortran manual updates

[Sandra Loosemore <sandra@codesourcery.com>]

On 11/2/21 9:20 AM, Martin Liška wrote:
> On 11/2/21 15:48, Sandra Loosemore wrote:
>> On 11/2/21 2:51 AM, Martin Liška wrote:
>>> On 11/2/21 00:56, Sandra Loosemore wrote:
>>>> I'll wait a couple days before committing these patches, in case
>>>> anybody wants to give some feedback, especially on technical issues.
>>>
>>> Hello.
>>>
>>> Appreciate the work you did, but the patchset will cause quite some 
>>> conflicts
>>> in the prepared Sphinx migration patch I've sent to the mailing list :/
>>> Anyway, I will rebase my patches. For the future, are you planning 
>>> doing similar
>>> documentation reorganization for a manual? Based on discussion with 
>>> Gerald, I hope
>>> we can finish the transition before the end of this year.
>>
>> My understanding was that, if this conversion is indeed going to 
>> happen, it's going to be automated by scripts?
> 
> Exactly, but the conversion needs some manual post-processing that I've 
> already done.
> 
>>   I hadn't seen any discussion of it on the list for months and 
>> thought the whole idea was on hold or scrapped, since it hasn't 
>> happened yet.
> 
> There was almost no response, so that's why I contacted Gerald about help.

I have to admit that I was buried in technical work at the time of the 
previous discussion (in fact, the Fortran things I am now trying to 
document), and didn't have time to look at the proposed changes in any 
detail.  I have wondered, though, why it's necessary to do this 
change....  if people don't like the way Texinfo formats output, can't 
we fix Texinfo?  Or hack it to translate the sources to something like 
DocBook instead, and then adopt that as our source format?  I can write 
documentation in any markup format, but it seems to me that structured 
XML-based formats are a lot more amenable to scripted manipulation than 
either Texinfo or restructured text.  If the rest of the community is 
set on Sphinx, I'm fine with that, but I kind of don't see the point, 
myself.  :-S

>> In any case it does not seem reasonable to freeze the current Texinfo 
>> docs for months while waiting for it to happen, especially as we are 
>> heading into the end of the release cycle and people are finishing up 
>> changes and new features they need to document.
> 
> Sure, I can easily rebase normal changes, but you are suggesting a 
> complete redesign/renaming. It's going to take me some time,
> but I'll rebase my patches.

Well, what I've done is hardly a "complete" redesign/renaming of the 
Fortran manual -- I've barely scratched the surface on it.  My main goal 
was just to update the bit-rotten standards conformance sections, which 
were unfortunately spread among multiple places in the document.  I did 
consolidate those few sections, but I did not make any big-picture 
changes to the organization of the manual, and I have not even reviewed 
any other parts of it for accuracy or relevance.  I'd been thinking 
about making a pass to do some copy-editing things, like making sure all 
chapter/section titles use consistent title case capitalization, but I 
will hold off on that if it's going to cause problems.

-Sandra