RE: [Firebird-docs] Docs, create, I can

[Nigel W. <ni...@e-...>]

Hi Paul,

> I visited your pages, they look really good! And so does the PDF. Can
> I ask what engine you use to generate it? It does a better job than
> ours :-)
> 

I wrote the engine myself. It's fully PHP and Firebird powered, and a cron
job to create the PDF every 5 minutes.
Doc Writers need only register on the site, and start producing articles.
Moderators decide when the article is ready for inclusion in the book.

It's probably an ideal system for multiple doc writers to prepare their
articles, and get them included in the final documentation...(I dunno)

> On thing though: the "Firebird Documentation Project" already exists,
> as a subproject of the official Firebird Project at SourceForce. So if
> you continue with yours as a separate project, I think you'd better
> give it another name in order to avoid confusion.
> 

Already changed. It's now called 'Firebird Pocketbook'. PDF should have
caught up by the time you get this email...

> 
> > Hopefully, it's a matter of, 'The more, The merrier?'
> 
> Well, yes and no. The more good documentation, the better. But for the
> project at SourceForge we
> a) really want DocBook sources (if you can't produce that, someone
>    else will have to convert it, which takes time), and

I'm presuming this is so you can quickly convert from XML markup, into
HTML/PDF in a snap. This system uses simple tags for bolds/underlines/code
snippets, etc, and generates HTML/PDF for you instantly. Perhaps I can make
your life easier.
Or perhaps I can add a DocBook output filter...

> b) would like to coordinate things a bit so there's not too 
> much overlap.
>    Of course this doesn't mean that WE decide what YOU write 
> about; just
>    that the docwriters talk about what they would like to / 
> are going to
>    write about, so we can make the best possible use of our collective
>    knowledge and skills.

Unfortunately my skills include:
Bare-iron installs(framework in pocketbook)
Securing databases(framework in pocketbook)
Theories of database design
Tables/triggs/st.procs/ref.integ/exceptions (no views yet - haven't had a
need yet)
PHP based apps, both web and command-line

> Not that I know. *Certainly* not in the SourceForge project. To date,
> we have very little: an introduction, an MS-SQL-To-Firebird Migration
> Guide, a Docbuilding Howto, a second Howto in the making and that's
> it. And I'll start documenting the Firebird API soon.
> 
> Now there's also a lot of free docs (and pointers to it) available at
> ibphoenix.com. I suggest you have a look there to see if some of the
> things you mentioned have already been taken care of, and then decide
> on what to start with.
> 
I wouldn't mind wrapping many of these how-to's and docs into one
pocketbook. Any problems here?
(References would be listed, or course)

Nige.