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Re: Progeny Debian Manual Project - Let's Talk Content



Oh my ...  another request ...

<disclaimer> I am no computer expert.  I may be full of s--t. </>

Anyway, let's cut off format wars and let's concentrate on CONTENTS.

Sorry but I am sick of this holly format wars.

<rant>

Really, if anyone have actual functioning code which convert
debiandoc-sgml into other "better" format, we can do that.  Hey, it is
GPL and nothing stops you. I will also be glad to see that.

But let's not waste time expecting someone else to convert file into
your favorite format.  Converting file is easy at first but fine tuning
details are tedious manual works.  I am speaking from my experience.

For this document, I used HTML as source.  Since it had too much machine
created junk tag information, I used w3m and created simple text file.
Rest is all perl script and manual works.  Lossy conversion to text
allowed me to include table as ASCII text but reverting it is
impossible.  You need to manually add information even if you have
super-smart script.

If you still insists, I have my opinion below on what you suggested.
Sorry being a bit too rough.

</rant>

On Tue, Apr 16, 2002 at 09:22:06AM +0100, Jaime E . Villate wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 15, 2002 at 01:45:13PM -0700, Osamu Aoki wrote:
> > Also, I will add a plain text file so people can just discuss content
> > without format issues.  That will be at
> > 
> > http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/users-guide/users-guide.en.txt
> 
> Hi, if your going to do that can I convince you to use the simple
> text formatting rules described in
>   http://www.fe.up.pt/~villate/parsewiki/doc/manual-en.html ?
> 
> If you do, we can then produce DocBook/XML, LaTeX or (X)HTML from it,
> using "parsewiki" (http://www.fe.up.pt/~villate/parsewiki/).  This
> will allow us to concentrate on the content, working directly in the
> text version, and leaving the mark-up issues to parsewiki (adding a
> Debiandoc target to parsewiki would be very easy if you want me to).

<acidic>

Sorry, I do not get it.

SGML -> Plain text
This is lossy process

Plain text -> whatever program ->All the format

Just because this is possible does not produce contents original SGML
can create.

Please first read documentation on debiandoc-sgml and understand its
limitation and its capability.  I do not understand your intention on
this matter etc... 

If you can create special text converter interface, that is interesting
but that is a lot of work.  If creating DOCBOOK/XML is final objective,
we can do it without going through "Plain text" for sure.

I think DOCBOOK/XML offers extra thing over debiandoc-sgml because:
 1. table as real table
 2. embedded figure

Above approach will not create DOCBOOK/XML which addresses these issues.
If Ardo feels good, these are 2 features he may include for next version
of debiandoc-sgml.

Basically, creating XML is trivial thing but good quality XML is
different thing...  

I think current debiandoc-sgml can create DOOCBOOK/XML without table as
real table content (Currently table is a simulated ASCII table as seen
on PDF file). This is trivial task, but you gain nothing by doing this.

</acidic>
-- 
~\^o^/~~~ ~\^.^/~~~ ~\^*^/~~~ ~\^_^/~~~ ~\^+^/~~~ ~\^:^/~~~ ~\^v^/~~~ +++++
 Osamu Aoki <debian@aokiconsulting.com>, GnuPG-key: 1024D/D5DE453D
.
 See "Debian reference": http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/quick-reference/
 Project at: http://qref.sf.net
.
 I welcome your constructive criticisms and corrections.


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