Philip Olson
2010-09-06 15:32:57 UTC
We may as well do this too.
I immediately downloaded the EPUB version from mysql.com and spent 5 minutes trying to open it on my Mac, and failed. Sure this can be overcome with education but it's worth noting that it's not easy, yet, and feels geared towards mobile devices so far. I didn't try the Firefox plugin. Although, the MySQL epub download appears to be missing an .epub file but I don't know the topic.
Regardless of my epub ignorance, I think it's a good idea to offer this alternative via PhD. I vaguely remember it coming up before, but now forget.
Regards,
Philip
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Brett Bieber <***@gmail.com>
> Date: September 6, 2010 6:10:38 AM PDT
> To: PEAR Doc List <pear-***@lists.php.net>
> Subject: [PEAR-DOC] Fwd: Farewell CHM, hello EPUB!
>
> An interesting announcement here — I know we've had plenty of issues
> with our CHM manuals, and maybe this is something we should consider.
> I would be in favor of an epub format for our manual.
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Stefan Hinz <***@oracle.com>
> Date: Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 4:31 AM
> Subject: Farewell CHM, hello EPUB!
> To: ***@lists.mysql.com
>
>
> For a long time, the MySQL Documentation Team has been providing CHM
> files for most MySQL documentation we publish. Like many other formats,
> CHM-format docs can be downloaded from http://dev.mysql.com/doc. CHM
> (Compiled HTML Help) has been the de facto standard help file format on
> Windows since 1997, but the technology behind it is outdated and has all
> kinds of quirks. The successor format introduced with Windows Vista is
> AP Help, but it hasn't taken off in practice so far. So, with CHM being
> outdated and AP Help spread anything but widely, lots of vendors have
> started providing documentation on Windows in PDF or HTML format.
>
> Building CHM-format documentation is a challenge of its own. I'll not go
> into details here, so let me just state that it requires a dedicated
> Windows box (or VM), and while it can be automated using Power Shell
> commands, there's no way to find out whether or not a CHM file was built
> correctly, except by manual inspection. This makes it different from all
> other documentation formats where technical QA is done (successfully) in
> an automated fashion.
>
> With the increasing complexity and size of our documentation (the MySQL
> 5.1 Manual contains more than 1.6 million words now!), providing CHM has
> become more and more of a pain, because builds tend to break more often.
> We've stopped shipping CHM with the MySQL Server on Windows months ago
> because we simply couldn't guarantee that the help file shipped with the
> software would work. Also, we're running short on hardware resources, so
> we'd rather stop wasting the resources we have on building a format
> that's of limited use, anyway.
>
> This is why we'll stop providing CHM for any of the documentation we
> publish.
>
> To alleviate potential pains anyone might have with this decision, let
> me tell you that we've started providing EPUB-format docs. EPUB (see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB) is an open standard format for screen
> readers, mobile or not, and is fairly easy (and not resource-intensive!)
> to compile. Thanks to Lenz for suggesting to build EPUB!
>
> Go to http://dev.mysql.com/doc to grab MySQL documentation in EPUB
> format. To read EPUB on desktop machines, I use a Firefox add-on,
> unsurprisingly called epubreader, which loads EPUB documents fast and
> renders them nicely. That said, please be aware that EPUB can't do
> anything about the fact that the MySQL Reference Manual is huge, so
> downloading it to a mobile device can take a while. The MySQL 5.1 Manual
> is currently a whopping 15 MB!
>
> See also: http://blogs.sun.com/mysqlf/entry/farewell_chm_hello_epub
>
> --
> Cheers,
>
> Stefan Hinz <***@sun.com>, MySQL Documentation Manager
>
> Phone: +49-30-82702940, Fax: +49-30-82702941, http://dev.mysql.com/doc
>
> ORACLE Deutschland B.V.& Co. KG
> Registered Office: Riesstr. 25, 80992 Muenchen, Germany
> Commercial Register: Local Court Of Munich, HRA 95603
>
> General Partner: ORACLE Deutschland Verwaltung B.V.
> Rijnzathe 6, 3454PV De Meern, Niederlande
> Register Of Chamber Of Commerce: Midden-Niederlande, No. 30143697
> Managing Directors: Juergen Kunz, Marcel van de Molen,
> Alexander van der Ven
>
> --
> MySQL Announce Mailing List
> For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/announce
> To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/announce?unsub=***@gmail.com
>
>
>
>
> --
> Brett Bieber
>
> --
> PEAR Documentation List Mailing List (http://pear.php.net/)
> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
>
I immediately downloaded the EPUB version from mysql.com and spent 5 minutes trying to open it on my Mac, and failed. Sure this can be overcome with education but it's worth noting that it's not easy, yet, and feels geared towards mobile devices so far. I didn't try the Firefox plugin. Although, the MySQL epub download appears to be missing an .epub file but I don't know the topic.
Regardless of my epub ignorance, I think it's a good idea to offer this alternative via PhD. I vaguely remember it coming up before, but now forget.
Regards,
Philip
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Brett Bieber <***@gmail.com>
> Date: September 6, 2010 6:10:38 AM PDT
> To: PEAR Doc List <pear-***@lists.php.net>
> Subject: [PEAR-DOC] Fwd: Farewell CHM, hello EPUB!
>
> An interesting announcement here — I know we've had plenty of issues
> with our CHM manuals, and maybe this is something we should consider.
> I would be in favor of an epub format for our manual.
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Stefan Hinz <***@oracle.com>
> Date: Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 4:31 AM
> Subject: Farewell CHM, hello EPUB!
> To: ***@lists.mysql.com
>
>
> For a long time, the MySQL Documentation Team has been providing CHM
> files for most MySQL documentation we publish. Like many other formats,
> CHM-format docs can be downloaded from http://dev.mysql.com/doc. CHM
> (Compiled HTML Help) has been the de facto standard help file format on
> Windows since 1997, but the technology behind it is outdated and has all
> kinds of quirks. The successor format introduced with Windows Vista is
> AP Help, but it hasn't taken off in practice so far. So, with CHM being
> outdated and AP Help spread anything but widely, lots of vendors have
> started providing documentation on Windows in PDF or HTML format.
>
> Building CHM-format documentation is a challenge of its own. I'll not go
> into details here, so let me just state that it requires a dedicated
> Windows box (or VM), and while it can be automated using Power Shell
> commands, there's no way to find out whether or not a CHM file was built
> correctly, except by manual inspection. This makes it different from all
> other documentation formats where technical QA is done (successfully) in
> an automated fashion.
>
> With the increasing complexity and size of our documentation (the MySQL
> 5.1 Manual contains more than 1.6 million words now!), providing CHM has
> become more and more of a pain, because builds tend to break more often.
> We've stopped shipping CHM with the MySQL Server on Windows months ago
> because we simply couldn't guarantee that the help file shipped with the
> software would work. Also, we're running short on hardware resources, so
> we'd rather stop wasting the resources we have on building a format
> that's of limited use, anyway.
>
> This is why we'll stop providing CHM for any of the documentation we
> publish.
>
> To alleviate potential pains anyone might have with this decision, let
> me tell you that we've started providing EPUB-format docs. EPUB (see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB) is an open standard format for screen
> readers, mobile or not, and is fairly easy (and not resource-intensive!)
> to compile. Thanks to Lenz for suggesting to build EPUB!
>
> Go to http://dev.mysql.com/doc to grab MySQL documentation in EPUB
> format. To read EPUB on desktop machines, I use a Firefox add-on,
> unsurprisingly called epubreader, which loads EPUB documents fast and
> renders them nicely. That said, please be aware that EPUB can't do
> anything about the fact that the MySQL Reference Manual is huge, so
> downloading it to a mobile device can take a while. The MySQL 5.1 Manual
> is currently a whopping 15 MB!
>
> See also: http://blogs.sun.com/mysqlf/entry/farewell_chm_hello_epub
>
> --
> Cheers,
>
> Stefan Hinz <***@sun.com>, MySQL Documentation Manager
>
> Phone: +49-30-82702940, Fax: +49-30-82702941, http://dev.mysql.com/doc
>
> ORACLE Deutschland B.V.& Co. KG
> Registered Office: Riesstr. 25, 80992 Muenchen, Germany
> Commercial Register: Local Court Of Munich, HRA 95603
>
> General Partner: ORACLE Deutschland Verwaltung B.V.
> Rijnzathe 6, 3454PV De Meern, Niederlande
> Register Of Chamber Of Commerce: Midden-Niederlande, No. 30143697
> Managing Directors: Juergen Kunz, Marcel van de Molen,
> Alexander van der Ven
>
> --
> MySQL Announce Mailing List
> For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/announce
> To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/announce?unsub=***@gmail.com
>
>
>
>
> --
> Brett Bieber
>
> --
> PEAR Documentation List Mailing List (http://pear.php.net/)
> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
>