Re: building documention (copyright?)

[Gerrit]

Hello John,

A very good point! Thanks for saving me: I should not consider making
another manual. I reacted so quickly to Ralf's request since his question
has crossed my mind before as well.

So I will not publish. But the files I prepared (both txt and
treepad-format) are available to anyone who sends me a request. Please send
me a direct mail, do not use the octave mailing list for these requests! But
I agree with John, it does not contain any information is all available in
the Octave DOC (http://www.octave.org/doc/octave_toc.html)

What seems lacking from the manual is a possibility to quickly browse the
list of functions available. I've found myself browsing the folders with
m-files, instead of properly using the manual. Am I mistaken if I think most
of us did?

I suggest to implementing a functionlist in html to accompany the exsisting
Octave DOC using frames. It could display a functionlist in the left pane,
and load desriptions in the right pane. We could present the reader two ways
to access the manual: with or without this function list. I volunteer in
implementing if this is considered a possible improvement.

Regards,

Gerrit Kiers

PS. I will leave for a long weekend and therefore cannot participate in a
further discussion that might emerge here.

----- Original Message -----
From: "John W. Eaton" <address@hidden>
To: "Gerrit" <address@hidden>
Cc: <address@hidden>
Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2001 5:37 PM
Subject: Re: building documention (copyright?)


> On 31-May-2001, Gerrit <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> | I have already a basic version ready in Treepad-format. This is a
freeware
> | Win32 viewer that makes browsing through these files easy since a tree
index
> | is shown in the left pane, the content in the right pane.
(www.treepad.com).
> | It all looks promising. And if that format is ready an export to html
> | (hyperlinking with the file names) might be possible as well.
> |
> | I need some time before publishing it via this mailing list. Keep an eye
> | out!
> |
> | I have a question:
> | If I publish it under the GNU General Public License I do not harm to
> | anyone's copyright involved, do I?
>
> If all the functions that you are trying to put in this format are
> part of the core Octave distribution, then they are already under the
> terms fo the GPL.
>
> But I'm not sure why you are doing this.  There are approximately 560+
> M-file functions in the core Octave distribution, and another 250+
> built-in functions in the C++ sources.  I also count more than 800
> @DOCSTRING commands in the manual souces, so most of the functions
> that are distributed with Octave are already documented in the Octave
> manual.  If there is a problem with the current documentation, can you
> please help to improve it instead of creating a completely separate
> document?
>
> Thanks,
>
> jwe




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