Re: documentation in PDF?

[Bill Allombert <Bill.Allombert@math.u-bordeaux1.fr>]

On Sat, Jan 19, 2008 at 05:58:26PM +0100, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> On 2008-01-19 12:54:32 +0100, Bill Allombert wrote:
> > On Sat, Jan 19, 2008 at 12:27:50PM +0100, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> > > OK, but why isn't docpdf the default (instead of doc)?
> > > 
> > > Also, even if "make docpdf" is used, "make install" installs the
> > > dvi/ps versions, not the pdf ones.
> > 
> > The issue is that if you build from source on a unix system, you might:
> > 1) have a old TeX installation which is not able to build pdf
> > or
> > 2) not have xpdf installed.
> > 
> > On the other hand you will have xdvi installed because it is part of
> > a TeX distribution.
> 
> I'm not sure that many users of binary distributions (e.g. Debian)
> have a TeX distribution (thus xdvi), whereas almost all of them have
> a PDF viewer, as PDF is nowadays a very common format.

In that case they will not be able to build the documentation whether
it is in DVI or in PDF. Of course they can download it from
<http://pari.math.u-bordeaux.fr/doc.html> instead, but we provide PDF
format there.

> > Also xdvi is generally be much faster than a PDF reader.
> 
> This depends on the PDF viewer. Some PDF viewers are as fast as xdvi
> with better output quality. The interface of PDF viewers may also be
> better (e.g. to select the zoom or to search for some text).

Current xdvi can zoom and search for text, and support hyperlink.

>   * xdvi has important display problems. For instance, it truncates
>     refcard.dvi on the right when zooming to much (zooming is sometimes
>     necessary, just to make the characters big enough so that they are
>     readable).

Well, I cannot reproduce this issue on my system.

> Then, if the user typed "make docpdf", then this means that he wants
> the PDF files and there should be a way to install them.

Yes, it seems we are lacking a install-docpdf target.

Maybe we need some configure check to see whether pdftex is available
and build the PDF documentation in that case. Or at least check whether
we are on OS X.

> Also, modern software provides PDF doc with hyperlinks, which can be
> very useful.

Unfortunately make docpdf does not provide hyperlinks yet.

Cheers,
Bill.