Investigate necessary documentation markup The NetBSD Project
Status: Closed Time to complete: 72 hrs Mentors: Radoslaw Kujawa, Julian Coleman, Julian Fagir Tags: research, overview

To choose the right markup language for documentation, you need a clear and comprehensive list of needed markup. While formats like Docbook or Latex support nearly everything, languages like Markdown or RestructuredText are more limited and have different dialects.


Your task is to investigate which formats are needed for documentation (links, blockquotes for code, tables, monospace font, headlines in different sizes, etc.) and specify those.
Formats like Docbook and mdoc are also providing semantical information, i.e. though they may display everything the same, e.g. the document knows whether a given monospace font written object is a filename, a command name, a function call, etc. Thus you also have to investigate whether these formats are used, and if their usage makes sense.


In the end, you should provide a table of needed markup formats and of currently used semantical content of manpages, and whether they are in use somewhere.

Our preferred format for the submission is some form of plain text, as that is most portable and can be read anywhere.  If you want to use a word processor, please export the file as text.  You could also add something like markdown or latex to add structure (these are both plain text based), but that is not a requirement.

Uploaded Work
File name/URL File size Date submitted
markup.txt 4.2 KB January 09 2013 02:29 UTC
analysis.sh 1.1 KB January 09 2013 02:29 UTC
markup2.txt 4.2 KB January 10 2013 01:17 UTC
markup3.txt 4.7 KB January 10 2013 01:41 UTC
Comments
Task Claimed by Katelin Huber December 10 2012 12:51 UTC

I would like to work on this task.

Claim Removed by Katelin Huber December 10 2012 12:53 UTC

The claim on this task has been removed, someone else can claim it now.

Task Claimed by Monika December 12 2012 05:27 UTC

I would like to work on this task.

Task Assigned by S.P.Zeidler December 12 2012 08:25 UTC

This task has been assigned to Monika. You have 72 hours to complete this task, good luck!

Progress? by Radoslaw Kujawa December 13 2012 21:47 UTC

Hello. How is it going? The task is more difficult than it looks like (as usual). We'd like to know if you already have some ideas how to solve this task. Do not hesitate to ask questions.

Initial Deadline passed by Melange December 15 2012 08:25 UTC

Melange has detected that the initial deadline has passed and it has set the task status to ActionNeeded. The student has 24 hours to submit the work before the task is reopened and sent back to the pool for other students to claim.

How is is going? by gnrp December 15 2012 17:01 UTC

Hi, the deadline passed. Do you still want to work on this task? If so, please tell us, such that we can extend the deadline, or get in touch with us via IRC.

Task Reopened by Melange December 16 2012 08:25 UTC

Melange has detected that the final deadline has passed and it has reopened the task.

Task Claimed by Matthew January 7 2013 22:31 UTC

I would like to work on this task.

Task Assigned by gnrp January 7 2013 22:41 UTC

This task has been assigned to Matthew. You have 72 hours to complete this task, good luck!

Ready for review by Matthew January 9 2013 02:30 UTC

The work on this task is ready to be reviewed.

Already very great by gnrp January 10 2013 00:38 UTC

Thank you, the result is great, exactly what we expexted.


However, could you please put in the first table with the macros their actual usage, such that you don't have to know mdoc to parse the table? E.g. that Nm prints the name, Xr is a reference, etc.


And maybe also their actual rendering as done by man (eg references are underlined, names are underlined, arguments are printed bold, etc.


If you do so, this task is complete. 

Thank you! by gnrp January 10 2013 14:27 UTC

Ok, this looks great. You could make the analysis.sh a bit prettier, but this doesn't matter. Thank you!

Task Closed by gnrp January 10 2013 14:27 UTC

Congratulations, this task has been completed successfully.