[albatross-users] Re: Debian package of Albatross

[Dave Cole]

>>>>> "Fabian" == Fabian Fagerholm <fabbe at paniq.net> writes:

Fabian> On Tue, 2003-05-20 at 04:45, Dave Cole wrote:
>> It would be cool to get Albatross into Debian.

Fabian> This is a future goal and I have started making the
Fabian> appropriate arrangements. However, the package must first
Fabian> reach a certain level of quality so the main focus right now
Fabian> is on the packaging.

Fabian> Currently, I'm having trouble with the generation of the
Fabian> Albatross documentation; the HTML docs in particular. The
Fabian> provided Makefile in the doc directory uses a tool called
Fabian> mkhowto, apparently distributed with Python, to generate the
Fabian> docs. I've pulled mkhowto from the Debian Python2.2 packages,
Fabian> but I can't seem to make it work.

When I first used the Python documentation tools I tried to extract
the files that we needed from the distribution.  After days of
frustration I decided to just use them from the unpacked distribution
directory.  It would be a big help if there was a Debian package for
the cools tools and files in the Python Doc/ directory.

Fabian> Do you have any pointers? How do you manage to generate the
Fabian> nicely formatted HTML using what's in the Albatross tarball?
Fabian> :)

I suppose it is mostly dumb luck and persistence that has ended up
with a combination of tools that seem to produce the right result.
This is what dpkg tells me I am using:

ii  dia            0.88.1-3       Diagram editor
ii  dia-common     0.88.1-3       Diagram editor (common files)
ii  latex2html     2000-beta1-6   LaTeX to HTML translator.

Later versions of dia have changed the font handling in a way that
causes all of the diagrams to break.  Hopefully this will be addressed
in subsequent releases so we can stop using back releases.  If not we
may have to change our diagram tool.

The Python 2.2 source includes a collection of files that provide many
useful latex macros and a useful program to drive the formatting
process.  To my knowledge these are not included in any Debian
package.  Look in the Doc/tools and Doc/texinputs directories.

- Dave

-- 
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