Is a Deviation v4.1 release on the near horizon?

I tried the rts build. Three issues:

1) Python2? Really? Sphinx is supposed to work with Python3, and new projects should really be using it. Does one of the extensions you're using require 2?

2) The recursive make call was broken. Fix is to use $(MAKE) instead of make. Already pushed that to the repository.

3) Sphinx failed to load the pdf building extension. The error was:

Well, that would be rst2pdf requiring python2. Using 2 just isn't a long-term solution, as it's already had an EOL announced. Isn't there another tool for building pdf from rst? If that's maintained, maybe it needs a look?

I've attached both the log from makedevbuild and the output of the pip list command.

Edit: Seems you can't attach files that don't have an extension, or use a "text" extensions. I feel like quoting bowie.. Fixed

The symlink didn't fix the problem.

rst2pdf imports. rst2pdf.pdfbuilder fails with a "no module named pdfbuilder" error..

No pdfbuilder.py found. No *builder.py found, either.

Python version 2.7.9.

Here's sys.path

>>> pprint.pprint(sys.path)
['',
'/export/mwm/src/bitbucket/deviation/team-manual/build/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/rst2pdf-0.93.dev_r0-py2.7.egg',
'/export/mwm/src/bitbucket/deviation/team-manual/build/venv/lib/python27.zip',
'/export/mwm/src/bitbucket/deviation/team-manual/build/venv/lib/python2.7',
'/export/mwm/src/bitbucket/deviation/team-manual/build/venv/lib/python2.7/plat-freebsd10',
'/export/mwm/src/bitbucket/deviation/team-manual/build/venv/lib/python2.7/lib-tk',
'/export/mwm/src/bitbucket/deviation/team-manual/build/venv/lib/python2.7/lib-old',
'/export/mwm/src/bitbucket/deviation/team-manual/build/venv/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload',
'/usr/local/lib/python2.7',
'/usr/local/lib/python2.7/plat-freebsd10',
'/usr/local/lib/python2.7/lib-tk',
'/export/mwm/src/bitbucket/deviation/team-manual/build/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages',
'/export/mwm/src/bitbucket/deviation/team-manual/build/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages']

Possibly easier to figure out what you're looking for:

>>> pprint.pprint([x[len("/export/mwm/src/bitbucket/deviation/team-manual/"):] for x in sys.path if "deviation" in x])
['build/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/rst2pdf-0.93.dev_r0-py2.7.egg',
'build/venv/lib/python27.zip',
'build/venv/lib/python2.7',
'build/venv/lib/python2.7/plat-freebsd10',
'build/venv/lib/python2.7/lib-tk',
'build/venv/lib/python2.7/lib-old',
'build/venv/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload',
'build/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages',
'build/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages']

Ok, I got it to build. Two issues:

1. I had to install inkscape first. Presumably to deal with the svg images.
2. I also got errors about missing fonts: the Bold, Oblique and BoldOblique versions of Times-Roman.

An experiments to consider.

Since I've already got all the parts installed - including the LaTeX bits - I used pandoc to generate a PDF from some of the chapters. it doesn't deal with the svg images because pandoc doesn't convert them automatically, and LaTeX doesn't grok svg. No complaints about missing fonts, but it didn't grok "source" macro/css class stuff. The results are absolutely lovely, in part because it didn't use helvetica for missing fonts. But not the format you want. Attached the install chapter anyway.

If you think the LaTeX output looks good enough to justify having to install all the bits, let me know what builders to install in the virtualenv & the builder name, and I can try that with sphinx

Sigh. It's a 139K file. I guess we can't upload pdf's.

Let's try zipping it up.

The point of TeX (at least to me) is that you get a design from someone who actually knows about designing books, rather than the typical tech manual look of a pastiche of things from computer UI people. To paraphrase Tufte, after reading tech manuals for a while, I want to read a well-designed book.

TeX has a number of different styles available. You can set them by adding setting 'docclass' in the latex_elements For instance, I set it to IEEE Transactions format, and got the attached document. Note that you get two-column output, but the images are unusable. You can also set options for the document clas there.

Cool. I added an epub target, and actually got a reasonable document. I have much nicer readers for epub than pdf on my android phones, so this is definitely a win!

Do you mind if I push these epub/latex changes to the repository? They should impact the pdf build at all.

That one looks really nice to me. Just needs some new and properly scaled images. But very readable and appealing (ok, I admit, I am LaTeX fan... )!

mwm wrote: For instance, I set it to IEEE Transactions format, and got the attached document. Note that you get two-column output, but the images are unusable. You can also set options for the document clas there.

I'd be surprised if the HTML version looked better in my ebook reader. While it can load HTML, the results are generally so unreadable it's configured to mostly ignore HTML formatting. But epub isn't about looks, it's about using it as an ebook. Trying to use HTML for that generally sucks because HTML has never been intended for that. The needs of the two end uses are sufficiently different that ebook readers make lousy HTML display devices, and web browsers make lousy ebook readers. For instance, epub has a standard format for the ToC, so my ebook reader has a command to open the ToC and then jump to a section. Never seen that work on an HTML file, or a web browser with such a feature.

I probably won't do much with the latex stuff, and definitely not before you're finished with it. You were so obviously unhappy with the formatting from other tools, I figured you were happy with the formatting you had and wouldn't really want to change to something TeXish. I only bothered to try the pandoc version because I already had all the tools in place. I do feel obligated to point out that pandoc can convert the RST verion to LaTeX, which would then allow us to use the LyX GUI editor. Not sure how it will deal with conditional text, and it preserves structure as opposed to layout, so probably not interesting either.

I did notice that both the LaTeX and epub version managed to not get the chapters right. They both seem to start with the sections in the overview as chapters, then switch to finding the right thing in later chapters. I thought this might be an issue with the SVG files not being handled by latexpdf, but the epub builder doesn't complain about them, and also has the problem. Possibly a difference in the interpretation of the rst structure between the rst2pdf builder and the other two? Maybe something you introduced? If you don't feel like looking into it, I'll try and get to it after you're done. The epub version is something I'm interested in having, as opposed to a pdf-generated-by-latex, which is really only interesting for the differences in the tool set.

On the font issues - where did you get those Times-Roman-Oblique fonts? My normal font set is a commercial postscript package I bought ages ago. I installed the urwfont package recommended for use on FreeBSD for "high-quality common fonts". Both of them are missing those fonts. They both have Times-<variant> with Roman as a variant instead of Times-Roman<-Variant>, and Italic instead of Oblique variants of the font. Googling for Times-Roman-Oblique doesn't turn up anything. Changing the devo.style file to use the fonts I actually have does solve the problem, And the manual looks a lot better that way. Sans headers with serif body fonts is one of the abominations practiced by tech manuals.