debiandoc vs. docbook

[Susan Kleinmann <sgk@kleinmann.com>]

Hello,

I believe it would be a good idea to revisit the policy stating that all
debian documentation should be written in debiandoc.

The debiandoc DTD was written a couple of years before XML became a standard,
and therefore addressed inadquacies of that time.  It is an understatement
to say that those inadequacies have now been addressed.  I therefore propose:  

1. We should adopt an XML based language because of the abundance of tools
   that exist to manipulate such languages.
2. We should consider docbook-xml because it is widely used, well documented,
   well supported by tools, and provides much greater expressive power than is 
   currently achievable with debiandoc.  There even exists a docbook-simple
   now, for those who are initially overwhelmed by the richness of the
   docbook tag set.
3. We should (soon) transform the debiandoc files that we now have to 
   docbook-xml using, e.g., the script written by Ardo van Rangelrooij:
   http://lists.debian.org/debian-doc/2002/debian-doc-200205/msg00183.html
   In any case, we should agree on a script or process to do the 
   transformation, because without that, in order to ensure some uniformity 
   in the transformation of all the documents to a new DTD.
4. If the original/current authors don't want to do the translation, we 
   should consider setting up some kind of volunteer method to do that,
   something like a bug-squashing-party.
5. Those who prefer to write in debiandoc can of course go ahead and do so,
   but should transform their documents to docbook-xml (or whatever DTD or
   schema is adopted) before uploading them to the CVS repository.

Please note the word "propose", and report your pros and cons on the above
ideas.  I'll try to summarize all the arguments, pro and con, after a week 
of discussion, with the hope that this will lead to some kind of consensus.

Best regards,
Susan