pdf documentation on the site

[Anthony Krinsky <An...@businessobjects.com>]

Please forgive me if this is off-topic.

I am an Hypersonic user and Derby newbie attempting to do a feasibility
analysis for using Derby for a specific customer requirement.  After
spending 2 hours futzing with the DITA pdf "cookbook" on the site I gave up
and solicited Jeff Levitt for the files - he kindly obliged.

At the risk of upsetting DITA folks, there seems to be a principle tested
here to the detriment of potential Derby adopters.  Time spent building
these files could be spent learning and using the product.

Until DITA authoring tools are widely and freely available, and building
DITA projects into PDF files which may be easily printed, is painless, I
would urge the powers that be here to post the PDF files to the site.  Jeff
is self-deprecating about the quality of his XSL output - but I can tell you
his PDFs are much better than the nothing I was printing out yesterday.

IMO, posting PDF files with builds does not in any way detract from the DITA
value-proposition per se.

Thank you kindly,

Anthony

Re: pdf documentation on the site

["Jean T. Anderson" <jt...@bristowhill.com>]

I can put pdfs on the web site tomorrow (probably) after infrastructure 
upgrades are complete.

  -jean

scott hutinger wrote:
...
> I would agree that DITA output should be on the site without the need to 
> build the docs.  One might explain that the output is in a state of flux 
> (will change) for a while.  I would agree with Anthony that expecting 
> people to build the output is a bit much.
> 
> scott

Re: pdf documentation on the site

[scott hutinger <s-...@wiu.edu>]

Jean T. Anderson wrote:
<...>

> In the meantime, I agree we should start posting PDFs to the web site, 
> even though at the beginning they might fall short of the desires 
> stated in http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/DERBY-79 . Good reasons 
> include
> doc updates from Jira issues are making it into the DITA source, so 
> docs built from DITA source will be more current than the html pages 
> currently out there.

I would agree that DITA output should be on the site without the need to 
build the docs.  One might explain that the output is in a state of flux 
(will change) for a while.  I would agree with Anthony that expecting 
people to build the output is a bit much.

scott

Re: pdf documentation on the site

["Jean T. Anderson" <jt...@bristowhill.com>]

This isn't off-topic at all -- see 
http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/DERBY-79 .  Once the infrastructure 
upgrade to apache systems is complete this weekend (I understand they 
are still working on systems through tomorrow) I'll try to remember to 
post a link to this email topic to that Jira entry.

There has been a lot of progress on docs in March.  Jeff announced the 
result of the derby community's vote to accept DITA as the source 
format: 
http://mail-archives.eu.apache.org/mod_mbox/db-derby-dev/200503.mbox/%3c20050302193138.488.qmail@web81609.mail.yahoo.com%3e) 
. Andrew announced the result of the vote to put the source docs into a 
new derby/docs module: 
http://mail-archives.eu.apache.org/mod_mbox/db-derby-dev/200503.mbox/%3c54ac72d7050311202169c261f9@mail.gmail.com%3e
.

More work is in the pipe, including work on a forrest dita plug-in to 
make production of html and pdf easier. See the thread that starts on 
http://mail-archives.eu.apache.org/mod_mbox/db-derby-dev/200503.mbox/%3c422A2458.3050307@www.mprojects.wiu.edu%3e 
.

In the meantime, I agree we should start posting PDFs to the web site, 
even though at the beginning they might fall short of the desires stated 
in http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/DERBY-79 . Good reasons include
doc updates from Jira issues are making it into the DITA source, so docs 
built from DITA source will be more current than the html pages 
currently out there.

And if anyone has expertise to help achieve DERBY-79 goals, please dive in!

  -jean


Anthony Krinsky wrote:
> Please forgive me if this is off-topic.
> 
> I am an Hypersonic user and Derby newbie attempting to do a feasibility
> analysis for using Derby for a specific customer requirement.  After
> spending 2 hours futzing with the DITA pdf "cookbook" on the site I gave up
> and solicited Jeff Levitt for the files - he kindly obliged.
> 
> At the risk of upsetting DITA folks, there seems to be a principle tested
> here to the detriment of potential Derby adopters.  Time spent building
> these files could be spent learning and using the product.
> 
> Until DITA authoring tools are widely and freely available, and building
> DITA projects into PDF files which may be easily printed, is painless, I
> would urge the powers that be here to post the PDF files to the site.  Jeff
> is self-deprecating about the quality of his XSL output - but I can tell you
> his PDFs are much better than the nothing I was printing out yesterday.
> 
> IMO, posting PDF files with builds does not in any way detract from the DITA
> value-proposition per se.
> 
> Thank you kindly,
> 
> Anthony