How to write a manual for a GNOME application with DocBook
This is the title of my work for Introduction to Libre Software at Master on Free Software. You can read the article here or in only one page or in PDF format (generated with dblatex). Furthermore you can download the source file or check the SVN repository (where you can find the works of my classmates). For your information, I paste here the abstract of my article, if you like to do any comment about the article feedback will be welcomed ;-):
This article is a guide about how to write help manuals for GNOME applications using DocBook as standard tool. This manual explains the right way to add a tutorial on a GNOME project, as well as the process to translate it. The integration process to add a new option in application menu that shows the help manual, is also explained in this article.
Writing this article I’ve had my first contact with DocBook, from my point of view I’d only use it if you want a good HTML output for your document, however if you prefer a good PDF I’d use LaTeX. For example, you can open any DocBook document directly with Yelp and you can see that the result is very good:
yelp ghelp:/path/to/myfile.xml
An example about how Yelp renders a DocBook document
Moreover, I’ve used DocBook to create some slides to do a presentation of my article (source ifle) in class and I like it a lot it’s very customizable with a good XSL and CSS. For example, I found some stylesheets that generates a good HTML for presentations. When I have some free time I’m sure that I’m going to play with DocBook slides. :-)
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