Re: Possible assistance converting docs to 1.4-happy format

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

In
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-doc-list/2000-November/msg00053.html
I mentioned a C program to go through docs and make at least _some_ of the 
changes in the http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gdp/changes/ list.

That was to gnome-doc-list. This is to gnome-i18n-list as well, since
I think it works just as well for translators. 

First, if you downloaded the "fixdoc" program, re-download it: the 
program has been replaced with a working version which does not eat 
double-quotes in attributes and which does not mutilate the DTD :) 

I tested it by running it on every .sgml file in my copy of gnome-applets, 
and it does not appear to have broken anything. I have not committed the
results: first, I want someone with Nautilus to double-check those
changes don't break anything (if you have nautilus and want the 200k 
tarball, mail me), and second...

I am very tempted to commit the results of running it on _every_
.sgml file in gnome-applets back into CVS. I have a shell script
to do it, and I believe it will cut about 50% of the work out of
making docs ready for 1.4. (It goes further. Alan, who wrote the
script, is strongly of the opinion that it should be run on all
the gnome-core user docs file, too, just to speed up the job of
converting them, and on the doc files in gnome-utils.)

This is extremely wholesale, and whilst "making less work for
other people" sounds good to me, I don't know how people feel
about this. Quite a few of the docs in gnome-applets are mine,
but quite a few of them are not, and there are tons of translations 
in there, too.

So I thought I'd give fair warning. Given that most translators 
seem to be active at the weekend, and that the US Thanksgiving
holiday is about to occur, I thought "tomorrow" would be pushing
it :) So how about this: if I haven't heard from people
before the morning (in GMT) of Tuesday 28th, I will commit the
results. Definitely for gnome-applets, and I'm pondering gnome-core
and gnome-utils (although I suspect someone's already done most of
those). Of the list of changes to make, it should do:

 Entities		yes
 Percent symbols	yes
 Including attribute id names for sect*, appendix, preface
 and chapter		yes
 Legalnotice		changing the id: yes
			inserting the wording change: _maybe_ (don't
			count on it, though)
 Lower case tags	yes
 Top-level document id	yes

It won't do: 

 Cross-linking		no
 GPL link		unlikely: if the legalnotice wording change is
			possible, perhaps this is
 Greater-than sign	no
 URLs			no: but it will probably be able to tell you
			it needs changing
 Document titles	no
 File naming conventions	no. I believe this is a packaging issue?

I am planning to include all the translations in the list of files I
do (hence cc). Is there anything I should know about ("Don't touch my 
docs!" is fine, just so long as I know) before I do this? If you 
specifically don't want me messing with your docs, or want to see the 
output first, let me know!

_Yes_, I will check the docs still build before putting them back in :)
If it emerges I still manage to break things, I will revert the
changes anyway. 

Telsa