Re: LaTeX and pdf for print and online documentation

Peter Williams wrote:

Im trying to convince a software company I work with to write their
documentation with LaTeX. Currently their single source doc is
available in both printed (Word) and online/context-sensitive form
(Word -> html).

I know there are possibilities such as hyperLatex, Tex4ht, DocBook, to
avoid having more than one source, but I thought the easiest solution
for them might be to use a pdf viewer for the context sensitive
documentation. Two possible objections sprung to mind: Getting the pdf
viewer to open "context sensitively", (and controlling whether an new
instance of the viewer should be created or not), and the apparently
blurry text display of viewers (compared to web browsers):

Is it possible to call the pdf viewer on the command line (currently
their app is windows only), so that it opens the document at the
correct location (analogously to getting a web browser to open a html
page at a location by pasing it "page.html#placeToOpenAt") ? Is this
method viewer dependent? Can one do the same passing a page number
(rather than a link)? Can one also control whether a new instance of
the viewer should definitely be created to do so, or a current one
reused (if available)?

Pdf viewers (Ive tried GsView and Acrobat) seem in general to display
text a bit "blurry", at least more so than a web browser would when
showing text at the same size. This is a bit irritating on the eyes if
reading much. Are there any solutions to this (does xpdf do a better
job)?

Thanks in Advance.

On my Linux system, neither Acrobat Reader nor xpdf shows text as "blurry".
Xpdf reader AFAIK is not available for Windows systems. The great advantage
of xpdf is that it will update and keep the page location. This is a big
help during development. For example with both an xpdf and Gvim window
open, if I spot an error on page 42 in xpdf I can go to Gvim, find the spot
with the error, correct it, save the file and recompile it, all without
leaving the Gvim window. Then in the xpdf window the command "r" will
refresh the window with the latest data yet maintain the same page number.
It is almost wysiwyg.

Context has some capability to deal with an XML input file. You might want
to explore that path instead of the older LaTeX variant.
--
John Culleton
Able Indexers and Typesetters
.

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