Re: [Refdb-devel] new-document and doc-processing menu behavior

[Michael S. <sm...@xm...>]

Markus Hoenicka <mar...@mh...> writes:

> Bruce D'Arcus writes:
>  > > I feel the best way to specify the style from the RefDB menu is to
>  > > pass this as an argument to the make command.
>  > 
>  > Not following.
>  > 
>  > In any case, I think the ideal is to have some flexibility here.  If I 
>  > create a document on a non-refdb system with some other xml editor, I 
>  > want to be able to easily move it to my refdb box fire up emacs, and 
>  > process the document without hassling with the command line.
>  > 
> 
> I wouldn't mind having the menu code create a Makefile if there is
> none as soon as you attempt to process a document.

I guess it's doable to have the menu code do it, but that seems like
a RefDB feature that's useful outside of the menu and outside of Emacs.
I think users working from the command line have the same need.

I'm thinking of the menu mostly just as a user-friendly front-end to the
existing command line tools. In this case, the Create Document menu will
just call refdbnd and the Generate Output menu will call make and pass
the appropriate target name (and variables, if needed) to that.

But AFAICT, there is currently no way, from the command line, of
having the RefDB command-line toolchain create a Makefile for an
existing document. Seems like what's needed is a "new Makefile" script
-- 'refdbnm' or whatever.

I guess the way that would work is, it would prompt you for the same
info that refdbnd does, with the addition of prompting to ask whether
the document uses short or full notation (because it won't necessarily
have the filename clue to go from).

> I am arguing against modifying the Makefile each time you run this
> command. Switching styles is easier by passing the style name as an
> argument on the make command line. The Makefiles are specifically
> designed to facilitate this. This is absolutely transparent to the
> user and faster as you don't have to write the Makefile back to disk.

I'm a 100 percent in agreement on this. It's easy enough to just pass
the style variable to 'make' along with any target names.

  --Mike