Re: Some notes on the Wiki

["Robert Thorpe" <rthorpe@realworldtech.com>]

 -------- Original Message --------
> From: Daniel Berlin <dberlin@dberlin.org>
> Sent: Monday, July 11, 2005 1:28 PM
> To: rthorpe@realworldtech.com
> Subject: Re: Some notes on the Wiki
> 
> On Mon, 2005-07-11 at 13:09 -0700, Robert Thorpe wrote:
> > >     I believe the Wiki is an invaluable documentation tool, precisely
> > >     because it allows such an unencumbered contribution process.
> > >    
> > > I agree.  I wasn't suggesting that the Wiki has no value, but rather
> > > that it's not a substitute for the more formal documentation.  Were it
> > > not for copyright issues, one could view the Wiki as an ongoing draft
> > > process for the documentation.
> > 
> > A comment from a user...
> > 
> > Please, please, please don't move GCC internals documentation to a Wiki.
> > 
> Nobody has suggested that we wouldn't ship docs.

Great
 
> > Even to users the internals documentation is useful.  It's useful when trying to find out why GCC is doing the things it does with the code given to it, it indicates where to look to find things in the source. 
> 
> >  This would be much harder if it were a wiki, in particular finding information on the version of GCC you're using would be much more difficult.
> 
> However, this isn't true.  The wiki stores every version of a page. We
> could make sure we know what versions of the wiki pages refer to what
> releases, and link them accordingly.

Please do that if you're going to use the wiki seriously for lots of docs.

> > Also, a web-browser is much slower than an info-browser, especially when doing searchs.
> 
> You must be close to the only user i've met who uses the info browser :)

When I said "an info-browser" I meant info-browsers in general, not standalone info in particular. Both Emacs and stand-alone info are fast (I think the Vim one is too).
I use Emacs Info, but the standalone browser is useful on Cygwin; it means you don't need to install Emacs just to read the cygwin docs.

Anyway, it doesn't matter much if your going to keep the docs in texi format,  people who want pdf's or html can generate those formats.