Re: yodl and Z shell documentation (was localtraps)

[Vincent Stemen <zsh@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 11:04:07AM +0100, Peter Stephenson wrote:
> Vincent Stemen wrote:
> > On a side note, even though the binaries all seemed to compile OK, I
> > got a compilation error on NetBSD with 4.2.5 with the zsh-4_2-patches
> > that looks to me like a failure in generating the manuals.  Here is
> > the error.
> > 
> > -------------------------------------------------------------
> > rm -f zleparameter.so
> > gcc  -s -Wl,-x -shared --whole-archive -o zleparameter.so   zleparameter..o  
> >   -ltermcap
> >  -lm  -lc
> > (  echo 'STARTDEF()';  echo 'def(version)(0)('4.2.5')';  echo 'def(date)(0)('
> > 'April 6, 2
> > 005'')';  echo 'ENDDEF()#' | tr '#' '\\';  ) > ./version.yo
> > case zsh.1 in  */*) target=zsh.1 ;;  *) target=./zsh.1 ;;  esac;  case ': yod
> > l' in :*) ;
> > ; *)  : yodl -I. -w zman.yo version.yo zsh.yo | sed -e '1s/\\-/-/g' -e '/^\.'
> > \''/d' > $t
> > arget  ;; esac;  test -f $target
> > *** Error code 1
> 
> You don't have yodl, right?  Configure hasn't detected it so it's put a
> ": " in front.  This should mean it runs through OK, but without
> generating the documentation, although it will produce an empty file.
> It's not obvious why it gave an error --- unless the wrap between "$t"
> and "arget" was there in the original, which is unlikely.

You are right.  I didn't.  Thanks.  I installed yodl-1.31.18nb3 NetBSD
package and it compiled ok.  I was not familiar with yodl.  I have
been using perldoc for documentation for most of the projects I am
working on.

I am unclear about the status and future of yodl.  I am curious, is
this the documentation format planned for the foreseeable future of Z
shell?

The listed Home page of
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jantien/yodl/
says

    Yodl has been discontinued

    If you were looking for yodl, you're out of luck. Yodl has been
    discontinued, you are advised to use texinfo.

    We have dropped yodl more than four years ago*), and it has been
    unmaintained since.

    *) Sep 3 1999 lilypond-1.2.6.tar.gz


The NetBSD pkgsrc Makefile contains

    MASTER_SITES=   ftp://ftp.lilypond.org/pub/yodl/development/

but when I try to connect, I get
Unknown host ftp.lilypond.org

I did find what appears to be the new home page on SourceForge at
http://yodl.sourceforge.net/
which only has a new version, yodl_2.01.01.tar.gz.

However, NetBSD does not have that version in it's pkgsrc ports.

Out of curiosity, I unpacked it and checked the docs.  There is no
Makefile and no configure script.  Turns out it has a build script
that uses icmake.  icmake is also not in the NetBSD pkgsrc tree.
Having never heard of icmake, I researched further. I discovered
icmake was originally developed for MS-DOS platforms and it's makefile
uses nearly full C language syntax.  Seems like it defeats it's own
purpose to have to write a full C program to handle your build
process.

Also, the docs in the new one don't seem to make any reference to the
current status or why the original home page says it has been
discontinued.