I've authored a few Quickbook formated documents for my own libraries. Writing documents in that format is relatively easy. I used very few tags, a few tables, maybe a variable definition list. Nothing too fancy. But, while working on the Spirit 2.1 documentation, I quickly realized that, editing in a simple text editor was a pain in the ass. What the authors wrote had some simple errors, like misspelled words. It became clear that they didn't have spell check in their text editors.

So, while editing these documents, my mind kept wandering to an editor that could do what I kinda missed. Being able to write a paragraph without having to constantly hit the “enter” key at the end of every line (reminds me of the typewriter days), being able to paste in macro's for common definitions, have a spell checker as you type. Being able to edit tables visually, like one would in a word processor. The list goes on and on. I guess I'm just spoiled in this sense. I like the visual presentation. Drag and drop are other cool features I've grown accustomed to.

So, I started to look at the Quickbook documentation for the syntax. Then, I went to the Boost utility to translate Quickbook to the Docbook format. Sure enough, Spirit was used for the parser. However, it still is a Spirit Classic grammar. Since I've learned a little bit about the new Spirit 2.1, I figured, this is a perfect opportunity for me to use the new Spirit 2.1 library with a practical purpose, and also to learn the QT environment.

I'm also currently between contracts, so, yet another reason to do something productive, instead of sitting on my ass all day playing Spider Cards, or Facebooking.

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.