Re: [RFC PATCH 0/3] Documentation: switch to pdflatex and fix pdf build

[Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>]

On Wed, 10 Aug 2016 18:54:06 +0300
Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@intel.com> wrote:

> With these you should be able to get started with pdf generation. It's a
> quick transition to pdflatex, the patches are not very pretty, but the
> pdf output is. Patch 3/3 works as an example where to add your stuff
> (latex_documents in conf.py) and how.

OK, now I have a bone to pick with you.

I applied this, then decided to install the needed toolchain on the
Tumbleweed system I've been playing with; it wanted to install 1,727
packages to get pdflatex.  Pandoc just doesn't seem so bad anymore.

So I switched to the Fedora system, and found myself in a twisty maze of
missing font files, missing style files, missing babel crap, etc., each
doled out to me one file per run.  But I did eventually get PDFs out of
it.

The output isn't great; among other things, it seems to be about 1/2 blank
pages.  But it's something.

I've applied this so we have something to play with, but it doesn't feel
like a great solution.  This is the sort of installation hell that we
wanted to get away from.  It makes me wonder how hard it can really be to
fix rst2pdf; I wish I could say I'll find some time to figure that out.
Sigh.

jon