[pooma-dev] docbook overview

[Scott Haney]

Hi Mark,

If Allan were really going to write all of the documentation, I'd grant 
your last point. However, I think it is reasonable to suspect that 
Proximation folks will have a little to contribute in this area. 
Therefore, our concerns should be considered. We can also debate whether 
the world is headed to SGML or, as I suspect, XML. However, let's not.

We'll give DocBook a try subject to the caveat that we're not going to 
spend time porting this to MacOS X or Windows, which means that we may 
be checking in badly-formed files that others will have to debug. Also, 
if it sucks for us, we'll provide input in other forms and allow the 
DocBook boosters to convert. Sound fair?

Scott

On Friday, May 25, 2001, at 01:20 PM, Mark Mitchell wrote:

>>>>>> "James" == James Crotinger <JimC at proximation.com> writes:
>
>     James> the biggest emacs user here. But I want a WYSIWYG authoring
>     James> tool for whatever we're doing.
>
> Hmm.  There *are* free DocBook WYSIWYG editors but I don't know how
> well they work.  One example is `www.conglomerate.org'.  Also
> `epcEdit' is not WYSIWYG -- but is specially designed to work with
> SGML.
>
> Also, there are commercial DocBook editors that what a lot of the
> publishing people are using now.  For example, Arbortext's `Epic' or
> Adobe's `FrameMaker'.  There's also something called XMetaL.  These
> are all WYSIWYG.  These tools are all priced around $750.
>
> It would be nice if DocBook tools were two years further along.  But,
> this is the format we want -- it's a good way of producing web docs,
> print docs, and even man pages, in a reliable way, and just about
> everyone is using it.  If we don't do this, then we'll end up
> converting two years hence, and that's a complete pain in the neck.
>
> In fairness, since Allan has the job of writing most of the
> documentation, and since he's happy in Emacs, shouldn't we let him use
> what he likes, especially when it's the forward-looking technology
> that the industry seems to be standardizing on?
>
> --
> Mark Mitchell                   mark at codesourcery.com
> CodeSourcery, LLC               http://www.codesourcery.com

--
Scott W. Haney
Development Manager
Proximation LLC
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