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Subject:RE: HTML doc with printer-friendly PDF? From:"Keith Soltys" <keith -at- soltys -dot- ca> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 20 Jun 2001 19:55:01 -0400
>
> Wow-eee -- just tried this with a bunch of Javadoc-generated HTML and it
> works great! (Standard disclaimer: I have no affiliation with
> this product,
> etc.) You just specify the HTML files you want to include, tweak a few
> settings, and generate the PDF. The order of the HTML files determines the
> page order, and you can tweak a few other settings like specifying a title
> page, setting page size, etc. My only complaint is that you have to fish
> through the directories and select the HTML files one directory at a time,
> rather than just pointing to the top-level directory.
Thanks, I thought that was what you had to do. The problem is that there are
a LOT of directories that you have to select in a reasonbly large API. This
doesn't work very well when you are dealing with maybe 50 packages, each
with several up to dozens of classes, with each class having an HTML file.
I was doing this using the web capture feature of Acrobat, which works
reasonably well if you start the capture at the package level. Still can be
a lot of work for a large API, but it beats selecting each HTML file. I'm
sure a PERL or script wizard could come up with an easier way, but that's
beyond me at the moment.
>
> But in this context (API doc), am wondering if it really makes
> sense to do a
> mondo PDF for it when the Javadoc HTML is supremely usable. My project is
> not huge, but it generated a 612 page manual. But I guess it's
> nice to have
> the option in case your manager thinks a developer needs another tome on
> his/her desk.
>
Agreed that most developers would prefer to work with the Javadoc directly,
but there are times when a printout of the API comes in handy. I had
requests from developers, who wanted something they could read when away
from their computer, they were used in code reviews and in meetings, and the
sales/marketing types used them to show customers that we did have an API.
We also used the MIFDoclet from Sun to convert the Javadoc to FrameMaker
format, but found that it required too much tweaking to produce a book;
dumping the Javaodoc to PDF was faster and suited our limited needs.
But a one-click Javadoc to PDF process would have been nice.
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