Re: [Firebird-website] Wrong Firebird 2.1 Language Reference Update published

[Paul V. <pa...@vi...>]

Hello Dmitry,

> > This should not have happened. The CVS source is currently in an "unstable" state, between versions, as can be seen right under the title:
> >
> >     ?? X....... 201?, document version 1.1 — covers Firebird 2.1–2.1.4
>
> And how could one know that? As a developer, I really expect CVS/SVN to contain the latest working version. Having it somewhere else (on the home hard disk) is not what can be expected from a distributed team working on the shared contents.

That's why we commit work even if the new version is not yet publishable. Try to look at it the other way round: suppose I built the Firebird binaries from HEAD and published them on the new website? I don't think the core team would be very enthusiastic.

> It cannot be simply replaced, because the links in the old copy are wrong. I've spent time on adjusting all the links in the documentation sources to point to the new site structure. And since nobody was willing to help that time and nobody has indicated that I shouldn't be looking in CVS for the actual sources, we have all the docs on the new site based on CVS. Like it or not.

The sources for the published versions *are* in CVS, but in a number of cases there have been later commits while working toward a new doc version which is not yet publishable - just as happens with program code.

With the PDFs, there's an additional reason why they shouldn't be built blindly from the sources. PDFs are built in a two-step process: first from DocBook XML to XSL-FO, then from XSL-FO to PDF. Sometimes (depending on the type and the length of the document), the XSL-FO output has to be manually adjusted before the final PDF is built. However, in most cases this is done fore cosmetic reasons only, so this issue is not as pressing as the other one.

> Now, knowing all the facts, please suggest a solution.

I take it you committed all the <ulink> changes to CVS? I'll have a look and come up with a solution later today. Probably the best thing to do is, for each doc separately, to take your diffs and apply them to the latest published/publishable version, then rebuild and republish.

For many documents, the latest CVS version IS the latest published version, so in those cases there's nothing to do except perhaps embellish the PDF.

> As for me, I feel myself as having done a dumb useless work.

No, but it would have been better, once you had planned how to do the conversion work, to announce it in firebird-doc and/or web-redevel to see if there were any gotchas.

Anyway, I'll have a look at it and see what can be done. I'm also willing to do the necessary work myself, as I have a little more free time now. These last few months I haven't been able to do any substantial work for Firebird (except working on the 2.5 LRU behind the scenes), and although that's not my fault, it doesn't feel good :-(

Speaking about the 2.5 LRU, it's on the verge of being published, BTW :-)


Cheers,
Paul Vinkenoog