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DocBook instead of debiandoc-sgml? (was Re: Planning an Italian manual)



Hi,

I took a look at DocBook & co. and it definitely is worth investigating
whether we should change to it as base for our documentation.  It
provides almost all the planned extensions to debiandoc-sgml (except
for a <strong> tag, but this is minor) and much more. 

I only did not yet find "easy" support for our planned document cross
reference scheme, but it may be possible to get this through some kind
of extension (this requires a closer look). 

What do the others think about this?  I know we had a discussion about
which DTD to use before, but Christian definitely has a point here.

One of the advantages of having an own DTD, though, is that WE control
what's happening to it.  However, I don't expect DocBook to be changed
that radically, especially since the industry is using it and thereby
almost a de facto standard. 

Thanks,

Ardo

Christian Leutloff <leutloff@sundancer.oche.de> writes:

> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
> 
> Ardo van Rangelrooij <ardo.van.rangelrooij@tip.nl> writes:
> 
> > > I've started with base structure and used debiandoc-sgml. With
> > > debiandoc-sgml is possible to add tables, figures and index? Is
> > > planned some internationalization, like "chapter"->"capitolo"?
> > 
> > Yes, internationalization is definitely planned.  I'm the maintainer
> > of the debiandoc-sgml tool and this is one of the first things to be
> > done soon. 
> 
> Can you please have a look on DocBook!? I encourage to switch to the
> DocBook DTD because it is very well designed. This DTD is used by many
> companies for their system documentation. Look at
> http://www.ora.com/davenport/ for more information about the founders
> of DocBook. (And this DTD is actively maintained).

> We can use different tools to process the SGML code into HTML and/or
> the printing devices. I'm using Norman Welsh Modular DocBook
> Stylesheets (http://www.berkshire.net/~norm/dsssl/docbook/). We can
> use these style sheets to customize the output for our needs. It's a
> very flexible and easy to use approach.
> 
> To "Get Going With DocBook" you can read
> http://nis-www.lanl.gov/~rosalia/mydocs/docbook-intro.html.
> 
> I really think that improving debiandoc-sgml is a waste of time. I've
> modified debiandoc-sgml to support the german language and have
> written a debiandoc2latex script including the appropriate latex2e
> class. This is all included in the installmanual-de package.
> 
> Debiandoc-sgml is much better (cleaner) than the sgml-tools. Ian
> Jackson decision for debiandoc was very wise. But in the last few
> months there come better (even cleaner, more flexible, more powerful)
> tools on the free software market (i.e. jade the DSSSL driven sgml to
> HTML, RTF and TeX processor).
> 
> All peaces are available as Debian packages from the main
> distribution.
> 
> Please have a close look on the mentioned pages and tools.
> 
> Thanks
>      Christian
> 
> -- 
> Christian Leutloff, Aachen, Germany         leutloff@sundancer.oche.de  
>       http://www.oche.de/~leutloff/         leutloff@debian.org      
> 
>             Debian GNU/Linux - http://www.de.debian.org/
-- 
Ardo van Rangelrooij
home email: ardo.van.rangelrooij@tip.nl, ardo@debian.org
home page:  http://www.tip.nl/users/ardo.van.rangelrooij
PGP fp:     3B 1F 21 72 00 5C 3A 73  7F 72 DF D9 90 78 47 F9


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