[MPlayer-dev-eng] Is anyone considering docbook for the man page ?

[Alban Bedel]

Hi Diego Biurrun,

on Tue, 18 Mar 2003 17:01:45 +0100 you wrote:

> > I'd like to say that I would like to have (someday) a kind of
> > integreted help as the man page is growing way to big now. By
> > integrated help i mean the possiblity of having mplayer document it
> > self. Something like'mplayer -describe fs' would ouput what the man
> > page is saying about this option. The menus could also provide that in
> > a more'interactive' way.
> 
> I had a similar idea some time ago.  The OSD menu could be a great way
> of providing help.  We should at least have the default keybindings in
> it.
Yep that would be first step. For that we just need a text file with
the message in it and tweak the default menu.conf.
> > The problem is that the man page format is not really unsuable for
> > that.
> 
> I presume you mean "not really usable" ;)
Sure :)

> > So what about having the man page in xml too ?
> 
> Good idea.  Let's switch the rest to XML first and see how it works out.
> I hope to finally get to this during the next days.
Sure, it was more a about the 'far future' (in mplayer time unit ;)

> > Imho it would be great as it will allow many differents output formats
> > wich is really nice considering the incresing number of platform
> > supported by mplayer.
> 
> We can currently transform the man page to text or HTML, which are the
> obvious targets for the moment but we have the problem of two different
> formats between the man page and the rest of the documentation.
If that's what you meant, i agree that if possible the same src format
should be used everywhere.

Anyway, if you are really considering using xml for the man page i may
try to convert it.

	Albeu