Why are "plugins" like unflatten, gvpack or gvpr not in the official documentation?

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1

They are documented elsewhere, but I don’t see where they are mentioned in https://graphviz.org/doc/. Why is that?

https://manpages.debian.org/testing/graphviz/unflatten.1.en.html

https://manpages.debian.org/testing/graphviz/gvpr.1.en.html

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if you search here: Documentation | Graphviz you will find these programs documented.

3

I see. Why are they all in PDF?

4

I don’t know why, but why not?
What would you prefer and why?

5

My 2c: It would be nice to make these PDF manuals available as HTML so that they’re searchable within the site, so we can link to headings, and so they’re consistent with the rest of the site, and so they’re more easily editable.

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6

I would like us to make them available as HTML one day. The only reason it hasn’t happened yet is the usual: lack of volunteer time.

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7

AFAIK the PDFs are generated from man page sources. So we could also compile the man pages to HTML if useful.

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8

is there a guide on how to help?

9

This is a great question. We need to write a contributor guide that explains steps for making contributions to code or the website beyond “edit this page”.

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10

The use of manpages and PDF dates the developers. As @smattr notes, the PDF are just generated from the manages. There seem to be good tools to convert manpages to HTML, so it would just be a matter of tweaking the makefiles. But then you get into the issue raised by @mark as to finding people with the time to do the editing.

On a related note, the info in manpages is reasonably sufficient for simple filters like unflatten and gvpack, but gvpr is complex enough that it could use a real manual/tutorial like the ones under User’s Guides.