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digitalmars.D.learn - MobI? Really?

reply Chris_D <Chris_D gmx.co.uk> writes:
The "D Programming Language Specification" seems to be the most 
important documentation for D.  Is it really only available as 
Mobi?  That is the most bizarre choice of format I've ever seen.

   Chris
Sep 18 2021
next sibling parent jfondren <julian.fondren gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 18 September 2021 at 20:40:56 UTC, Chris_D wrote:

 The "D Programming Language Specification" seems to be the most 
 important documentation for D.  Is it really only available as 
 Mobi?  That is the most bizarre choice of format I've ever seen.

   Chris


No, it's not *only* available as mobi. It's also right here: 
https://dlang.org/spec/spec.html
Sep 18 2021
prev sibling parent reply Jordi Sayol <g.sayol gmail.com> writes:
El 18/9/21 a les 22:40, Chris_D via Digitalmars-d-learn ha escrit:

 The "D Programming Language Specification" seems to be the most important
documentation for D.  Is it really only available as Mobi?  That is the most
bizarre choice of format I've ever seen.
 
    Chris
 
 


https://d-apt.sourceforge.io/
Sep 18 2021
parent reply Chris_D <Chris_D gmx.co.uk> writes:
Thanks for the replies.

jfondren: Sorry, but I am talking about documentation.  For me, 
online web pages don't qualify; they are in the cloud, unreal, 
with no substance.  Does anyone really read 300 pages online, in 
a web browser?  Of course not.

Jordi Sayol: PDF!  ePub!  Now that's what I call documentation!

But that's on SourceForge.  My first port of call to learn about 
D was, and is, dlang.org, where the *only* links to the "D 
Programming Language Specification" in any downloadable format 
are for the Mobi.

   Chris
Sep 21 2021
next sibling parent jfondren <julian.fondren gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 21 September 2021 at 16:14:52 UTC, Chris_D wrote:

 jfondren: Sorry, but I am talking about documentation.  For me, 
 online web pages don't qualify; they are in the cloud, unreal, 
 with no substance.  Does anyone really read 300 pages online, 
 in a web browser?  Of course not.


You can download them to a local copy, and you can generate them 
locally. But usually I am not reading 300 pages but going to a 
specific part of the documentation to look a specific thing up, 
and there I'm usually online anyway.

As a thing to read from beginning to end rather than a spot 
reference I think the current spec would be very wanting for a 
few reasons, like internal hyperlinks and little of the 
justificatory text that 'annotated' specifications tend to have. 
For a recent example, in https://dlang.org/spec/garbage.html it 
just says "Do not misalign pointers if those pointers may point 
into the GC heap". Why not? If you can get away with it on a 
particular architecture, maybe it's fine? Actually, it's a big 
deal.

What I'd like is Perl's offline documentation. Just type 'perldoc 
perl' into a unix system and look at it. Or 'perldoc -f stat', 
'perldoc -q columns'.


 Jordi Sayol: PDF!  ePub!  Now that's what I call documentation!

 But that's on SourceForge.  My first port of call to learn 
 about D was, and is, dlang.org, where the *only* links to the 
 "D Programming Language Specification" in any downloadable 
 format are for the Mobi.

   Chris


I haven't had consistent results with requesting updates to the 
online docs, but you could try just adding a link to this page. 
There are other offsite links and they occasionally need tending 
to, as well.

A more immediate place to make a change is 
https://wiki.dlang.org/The_D_Programming_Language , where it'd be 
very easily to slide a few extra links onto the 'D Language 
Specification' link at the top right.

The wiki isn't only accessible through Community/Wiki; several of 
the Resources links on dlang.org also point to it.
Sep 21 2021
prev sibling next sibling parent Mike Parker <aldacron gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 21 September 2021 at 16:14:52 UTC, Chris_D wrote:

 Thanks for the replies.

 jfondren: Sorry, but I am talking about documentation.  For me, 
 online web pages don't qualify; they are in the cloud, unreal, 
 with no substance.  Does anyone really read 300 pages online, 
 in a web browser?  Of course not.


I do! As far as I know, that's how most D users read the D docs. 
The docs do ship with DMD, though. On Windows, there's an `html` 
folder in the installation tree. I don't know how they're 
installed on other platforms.
Sep 21 2021
prev sibling parent wjoe <invalid example.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 21 September 2021 at 16:14:52 UTC, Chris_D wrote:

 Thanks for the replies.

 jfondren: Sorry, but I am talking about documentation.  For me, 
 online web pages don't qualify; they are in the cloud, unreal, 
 with no substance.  Does anyone really read 300 pages online, 
 in a web browser?  Of course not.


I do, too.
HTML is a markup language specifically created to present text on 
the screen and it is very portable. There's no online requirement 
for viewing HTML either.
A browser is an excellent tool to read it and is installed on 
every platform and device by default.
But it is easily converted or displayed by other software.
HTML is also what ddoc or any other documentation tools generate.
On windows it can be compiled and has a searchable index.

But I share your distaste for online-only documentation. However, 
since it's conveniently installed into 
/usr/share/doc/dmd-[version]/html/d/index.html on my Linux box, 
it's available offline.

You may want to have a look on your hard drive. I'm quite certain 
you've got a local installation, too.
Sep 22 2021