While it is possible to build generators outputting Microsoft Word??™s
native binary format, and indeed that would be a fun??”if somewhat masochistic??”
challenge, those electing to output plain text RTF need not feel they are setting the bar
too low for themselves. (Sadly!)
Viable candidates for output formats include RTF, Microsoft Of?¬?ce open XML
format, SGML, HTML, and LaTeX. These can be used directly, or then fed to an
appropriate tool to generate Word DOC ?¬?les, PDF ?¬?les, Windows Help ?¬?les, and so
on. Also, taking a higher-level view for a second, we can note that the domain these
280 GENERATOR DEFINITION
various languages aim to cover is essentially the same. There are good possibilities to
convert documents from one of these formats to another, or produce other similar
formats such as DocBook, Texinfo, and groff.
Despite the plethora of options, most projects make a simple choice: if they want to
view their documents on a computer, they use HTML; if they want to print them, they
use RTF. In both cases, there are three important areas in addition to the text: images,
styles, and scripts.
Images Images of the models are of course a key part of the documentation. The
generation language must offer facilities for outputting models to separate image ?¬?les,
and making the generated documentation refer to those ?¬?les.
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