Re: [PATCH] Documentation: Add target to build PDF manpages

Thomas Schneider [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Personally, I honestly am not quite sure why anybody wants to
generate manpages in the PDF format like this patch does, unless
they are planning to print them on paper, in which case the existing
manpages (git.1 and friends) or html pages (git.html and friends)
should be an already available source format.

Somebody in the #git IRC channel...
... So, maybe most people are fine with the other formats, but those who
need PDF can directly generate them.

I think you misunderstood me.  I am not dismissing the need for PDF;
I am just saying that there is no need to directly generate them
from asciidoc sources, especially when there are already manpages
and html pages available as source to "print" to PDF.

2015-03-20 22:28 GMT+01:00 Junio C Hamano [off-list ref]:

I think you misunderstood me.  I am not dismissing the need for PDF;
I am just saying that there is no need to directly generate them
from asciidoc sources, especially when there are already manpages
and html pages available as source to "print" to PDF.

Oh, I might indeed have misunderstood you there.
Yes, you can indeed also generate nice-looking PDFs from HTML or
troff.  But if you need all of git’s manpages as PDF, a make target to
generate them surely comes in handy, so you don’t have to do it on
your own.  Also, if you are bulk-compiling all of the manpages, it
makes more sense to build them from the DocBook XML AsciiDoc generates
rather than from HTML or troff, simply because of one step less in the
toolchain and hence a way faster build.  It does not make a big
difference if you just compile one document, but for 169, it’s a
considerable difference.