7. 2.000beta9a

Enhancements | Fixes | Incompatibilities

7.1. Enhancements

A series of LOGO_BASE variables have been introduced so that the browser-time location of HTML images can be different to the compile-time location. For example, by defining:

!define DOC_LOGO      "mylogo"
!define DOC_LOGO_BASE "/images/"

the URL of the logo image will be "/images/mylogo.gif".

New aliases have been introduced to make it easier to rebuild topics (+mt) and chapters (+mc) in the MIMS documentation. For example, to build the PostScript for the MIMS topic called 3201_msm200a.sdf, the command is:

       sdf -2ps +mt 3201_msm200a

7.2. Fixes

Perl 5.004 introduced a warning about an odd number of elements in a hash list which previous versions of SDF occasionally triggered. The cause of the warning has now been fixed.

The label parameter on the note filter now works.

Some minor documentation corrections have been made. In particular, the URL for the Ultimate editor is now correct.

Lines now appear above and below notes in HTML.

7.3. Incompatibilities

The box filter has been changed to do what people expect. The old behaviour is available by adding the lines parameter.

7.4. Future Incompatibilities!

The next version of SDF is probably going to be (almost) upwardly compatible with Perl5's POD format. As a result, the = character will be a multi-line macro invocation, rather than being a shorthand for E:. If you are currently using =, please replace it with E: in preparation for the next release.

Making SDF upwardly compatible with POD will undoubtedly introduce a few other incompatibility problems. However, I'll do what I can to minimise these. The goal is to make it possible to use SDF for Perl5 module documentation when POD is not sufficient.

If you have any feedback on the idea of making SDF upwardly compatible with POD, send some email to the SDF users mailing list (sdf-users@mincom.com).

This release will also be the last one supporting Perl 4.036. Future releases will require Perl 5.