Dear all,
Summary for the time-pressed reader:
- Some of us would like to simplify the workflow for editing the CF conventions.
- I've made a work-in-progress demo here:
http://cf-metadata.github.io/cf-conventions.html.
- The demo is automatically built from AsciiDoc sources here:
https://github.com/cf-metadata/cf-conventions-asciidoc
- Feedback welcome! What's the appetite for exploring further?
I've recently delved back into the options for simplifying and automating the workflow for modifying the CF conventions document. This is in the light of some useful discussion early last year, and a friendly nudge from Rich Signell (thanks Rich!).
In general, this has been an encouraging exploration. Fortunately we are not at the technological vanguard of the publishing world - others with greater resources (e.g. O'Reilly) have already paved the way. As a result I believe we can achieve a very workable solution based around the AsciiDoc format<
http://asciidoctor.org/docs/what-is-asciidoc/>.
There are three main problems I've been looking at:
1. How to get from the current DocBook sources to AsciiDoc?
2. How to make the authoring/reviewing process easier?
3. How to convert AsciiDoc to HTML and PDF?
To get from DocBook to AsciiDoc I have extended an existing solution<
https://github.com/rhattersley/docbook2asciidoc> from O'Reilly. They use the AsciiDoc format in their Atlas publishing platform so they have already done most of the hard work. Where possible I'd like to get my extensions merged into their original.
The authoring/reviewing process relies on GitHub pull requests and their built-in support for rendering AsciiDoc. This provides a good preview of the document (although some features of the final HTML output are not rendered), and an inline reviewing system. (NB. I've split the document into multiple files, but that is not essential.) Once a change has been accepted the corresponding HTML (and eventually PDF) is automatically rebuilt and pushed to the demo website.
To get from AsciiDoc to HTML/PDF I have used the excellent asciidoctor<
http://asciidoctor.org/> software for HTML and a sister project for PDF. The HTML support is excellent but the PDF solution is less mature (there is an alternative which might do better). That said, both projects are under active support/development and are open to contribution.
Questions, feedback, encouragement, offers of assistance and/or beer ... they're all welcome! ;-)
Richard Hattersley AVD Expert Software Developer
Met Office FitzRoy Road Exeter Devon EX1 3PB United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1392 885702 Fax: +44 (0)1392 885681
Email: richard.hattersley at metoffice.gov.uk<mailto:richard.hattersley at metoffice.gov.uk> Website: www.metoffice.gov.uk<
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/>
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Received on Tue Jan 27 2015 - 09:03:48 GMT
