mdw@git.distorted.org.uk Git - sgt/halibut/blob - doc/intro.but

   1 \versionid $Id$
   2
   3 \C{intro} Introduction to Halibut
   4
   5 Halibut is a multi-format documentation processing system.
   6
   7 What that means is that you write your document once, in Halibut's
   8 input format, and then the Halibut program processes it into several
   9 output formats which all contain the same text. So, for example, if
  10 you want your application to have a Windows help file, and you also
  11 want the same documentation available in HTML on your web site,
  12 Halibut can do that for you.
  13
  14 \H{intro-formats} Output formats supported by Halibut
  15
  16 Currently Halibut supports the following output formats:
  17
  18 \b Plain ASCII text.
  19
  20 \b HTML.
  21
  22 \b Windows Help.
  23
  24 \b Unix \cw{man} page format.
  25
  26 \b GNU \c{info} format.
  27
  28 \b PostScript.
  29
  30 \b PDF.
  31
  32 \H{intro-features} Features supported by Halibut
  33
  34 Here's a list of Halibut's notable features.
  35
  36 \b Halibut automatically assigns sequential numbers to your
  37 chapters, sections and subsections, and keeps track of them for you.
  38 You supply a \e{keyword} for each section, and then you can generate
  39 cross-references to that section using the keyword, and Halibut will
  40 substitute the correct section number. Also, in any output format
  41 where it makes sense, the cross-references will be hyperlinks to
  42 that section of the document.
  43
  44 \b Halibut has some support for Unicode: you can include arbitrary
  45 Unicode characters in your document, and specify fallback text in
  46 case any output format doesn't support that character.
  47
  48 \b Halibut's indexing support is comprehensive and carefully
  49 designed. It's easy to use in the simple case, but has powerful
  50 features that should make it possible to maintain a high-quality and
  51 useful index.