Re: [mpi-21] Documents

[Anthony Skjellum <tony@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I agree with Bill and Bronis... Latex.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bronis R. de Supinski" <bronis@xxxxxxxx>
To: mpi-21@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, January 4, 2008 2:35:21 PM (GMT-0600) America/Chicago
Subject: Re: [mpi-21] Documents


I agree. I am fairly agnostic about document programs
in general and let my co-authors pick the format more
often than not. That said, I have quickly gone from
LaTex ignorant to reasonably proficient in it. It is
very easy to make large formating changes in it while
most of the alternatives are filled with bugs that
end up costing hours to work around. As Bill says, most
of the time you only need to use your favorite text
editor with LaTex and can ignore any formatting commands.
I am sure there are many who could add them when needed.

Besides, any computer scientist that can't handle the
basic pattern-matching required to do simple LaTex formatting
should not have input into computing standards...

Bronis

On Fri, 4 Jan 2008, William Gropp wrote:

> I think that we should stick with LaTeX.  The current document is in
> LaTeX, and the need to use an older version was only to verify that
> we had the correct sources.  Once we're under source control, that
> issue vanishes, and we can easily produce PDF, HTML, and other
> formats.  As most of the writing is text, the learning curve for most
> authors is quite short.  And for a standard, cleanly separating
> concepts (like emphasis) from ad hoc formating (italics) is quite
> important; the more so for large documents.   LaTeX is actually
> better at that than many other systems (whose WYSIWYG but
> undisciplined interfaces encourage ad hoc formatting insertions).
>
> Bill
>
> On Jan 4, 2008, at 2:08 PM, Jeff Squyres wrote:
>
> > Per Rich's note about making a consolidated MPI-2.1 document
> > (including all of MPI-1.2+errata and all MPI-2.1+errata), I think
> > that's a fantastic idea.
> >
> > 1. What will be the source format for this document (and for
> > successive MPI documents)?  The original MPI documents were written
> > in the then-current version of LaTeX (Rainer Keller tells me that
> > you have to downgrade to that version of LaTeX to build the docs).
> > Are other source formats possible?
> >
> > LaTeX is fine, but there are only a few people who can write in it;
> > the learning curve is fairly steep.  Other open formats with free
> > editors are feasible for large documents.  For example, OpenOffice
> > supports templates, natively exports to multiple formats (such as
> > PDF and HTML), supports digital signatures to guarantee the One
> > True MPI Standard Document, etc.  Others are likely possible, too.
> >
> > 2. PDF is fairly prevalent these days; it would be good if MPI-2.1
> > (and later) had official PDF's published.  I don't have much of an
> > opinion about official postscript docs anymore; does anyone still
> > have a requirement for that?  Official HTML should also be
> > published.  In making PDF's, it would be quite useful if they were
> > fully indexed, cross-linked (e.g., clicking in the TOC and index
> > takes you to the appropriate section), and full-text searchable.
> > [pdf]LaTeX, OpenOffice, and others can produce such PDF documents.
> >
> > --
> > Jeff Squyres
> > Cisco Systems
> >
>
> William Gropp
> Paul and Cynthia Saylor Professor of Computer Science
> University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
>
>
>



-- 
Anthony Skjellum, PhD
Professor and Chair
Dept. of Computer and Information Sciences
University of Alabama at Birmingham
+1-(205)934-8657; FAX: +1- (205)934-5473
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