RE: [pooma-dev] docbook overview

[James Crotinger]

My main concern here is Allan's comment that the main authoring tool is emacs. Don't get me wrong - I'm probably the biggest emacs user here. But I want a WYSIWYG authoring tool for whatever we're doing. I've written tons of LaTeX and done a couple of papers with HTML (without a WYSIWYG tool) and I'm tired of it (unless I need a lot of equations - I still haven't seen a good alternative to LaTeX for this [I'm very picky about formatting]).

If there are some decent WYSIWYG tools that can save their documents in DocBook format, then that would be great, especially if there is a planned path toward XML and if the WYSIWYG tools don't make gratuitious changes to the ASCII file so that "cvs diff"'s are small when the changes are small.

        Jim

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Mitchell [mailto:address@hidden]
> Sent: Friday, May 25, 2001 11:57 AM
> To: address@hidden
> Cc: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [pooma-dev] docbook overview
>
>
> >>>>> "Scott" == Scott Haney <address@hidden> writes:
>
>     Scott> Hi Allan,
>
>     Scott> I have a few questions and concerns.
>
>     Scott> Is it clear that HTML with CSS will not work for us?
>
> Just about.  I've been there and tried that -- Netscape, for example,
> basically falls over on all non-trivial instances of CSS.  It doesn't
> just do the wrong thing: it crashes.
>
>     Scott> This said, I think your points are quite valid in general
>     Scott> and maybe, in practice, DocBook is a little less scary than
>     Scott> it sounds from your message. Therefore, I look forward to
>     Scott> your report.
>
> I strongly suggest that we go with DocBook.  One of the big advantages
> is the ease with which you can get printed manuals.  For example,
> O'Reilly now lets you give them source for a book as DocBook -- and
> they just print it, and you're done.
>
> It's not actually as threatening as Allan made it sound :-), and any
> SGML editor will work fine with it.
>
> It's also proven technology: we've been using it for months on some
> other projects, with good success.  Allan, you might want to contact
> Alex Samuel (address@hidden) to find out exactly how he set
> up DocBook for the work he's been doing with it.  But, as long we have
> a standard process to get set up, that's the important thing.
>
> Thanks,
>
> --
> Mark Mitchell                   address@hidden
> CodeSourcery, LLC               http://www.codesourcery.com
>