Re: [gst-devel] gstreamer application developer and plugin writer manuals

[Thomas V. S. <th...@ap...>]

Hi,

> hi,
> 
> I withdraw my proposal to unify some stuff in the docs, because the
> docs-build system is quite borked^H^H^H^H^Hstrange :(

Don't fear what you do not know :)

You may not know this, but for a very long time the docs were complete
voodoo.  In practice, they typically only built on one person's machine,
and that was the machine of the last one touching them.  AFAIK, after I
was done with them (a task for which at one point I even created a
completely stripped down docbook tarball to use as a template - see
http://thomas.apestaart.org/download/docbook-xml-template/

I only did so because I was fed up with the whole docbook toolchain
breaking subtly between various releases and distros.  It's a lot easier
to keep this template working, and then apply fixes to other projects
using the template.

Just to point out that while you may feel it is borked (though you
provide no explanation of that) you should consider you're stepping on
the toes of someone who's done a lot of hard work to make it better than
it was before :)

> The build setup copies files around and stuff, so using shared files is
> not a trivial thing to do.

You're saying A => B where A and B are unrelated.

>  Too bad I only noticed this after rearranging
> section for over three hours :(

I feel your pain, it's never fun to realize that there is something not
working out as planned after putting in the work.  But consider this -
we can do this together.  I'm pretty sure that whatever it is you want
to do isn't as hard as you think it is right now.

> I've added a note to the README to save others the trouble. There wasn't
> any interest in better docs anyway ...

Follow the light, Stefan.  No one is not interested - you're just more
interested than others.  Every developer on GStreamer has at least one
area of interest that is more at heart to him than any other.  We have
all felt the experience of feeling we're the only one who cares about a
certain topic...

I for one am glad I am no longer the one who feels he is alone in caring
for docs...

Back to answering your original mail now.

Keep up the good work !

Thomas


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