Re: Use of SGML for documentation (Re: potato -> woody upgrade not smooth...)
On Sat, Jul 07, 2001 at 12:28:38PM +0200, Georges Mariano wrote:
> Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > LaTeX is for preparing documents to be typeset,
> NO... this is a short (but common) view of working with LaTeX...
I have worked with LaTeX for years, and I continue to use it daily for making
printed documents and PDF output. I like LaTeX a lot.
>
> > package, and take a look at the SGML source for (e.g.) the debian-policy
> > package.
> >
> > Turn of your Buzz-Word alarm for a few minutes and give it a chance. Use
> > it to generate latex with debiandoc2latex, and printed output via DVI. Use
> > it to generate texinfo, HTML and plain text.
>
> All of this is possible starting with LaTeX. don't use latex2html but other
> processors (e.g. HeVeA)
That isn't the point at all. Such LaTeX processors are taking what is
essentially typographical data and trying to render it some other way. SGML
provides for logical markup, and various mappings to presentation styles.
It is difficult to get decent-looking plain text output from a LaTeX document.
HTML is also problematic.
> > For comparison purposes, you may wish to run some of your LaTeX documents
> > through latex2html, and perhaps the result through w3m to generate text.
> > Marvel at all of the typesetting commands that have been lost.
> - by the way, I'm not sure that people use w3m to read documentation, why not
> lynx, or vi for the text ;-)
I don't think that you read what I wrote. I suggested using w3m to convert
HTML to text. I find it does a much better job at this than lynx. vi has no
facility for rendering HTML that I know of.
I use w3m to read HTML documentation all the time.
> You don't need marvelous typesetting commands in usual documentation, right !
> But you need tables, you need pictures or figures, you need index,
> references... Look at usual linux documentations and you will see that they
> are rather poor from this point of view...
Debiandoc, I believe, does not support tables or pictures, and perhaps not
indices, but DocBook does. Both support references. Look at the documents at
<http://www.debian.org/doc/ddp>.
> > SGML is for defining document structure, not placing text on a page.
>
> This is also true (structure) with LaTeX BUT it allows you _if you need it_
> to place text somewhere on a page, but this is not the first natural use of
> LaTeX, this is _really_ why LaTeX is much more powerful than SGML, it can do
> both... What you can do with SGML (**and the corresponding tools**) can be
> done with LaTeX (**and the corresponding tools**), the reverse is not true.
By that argument, we should write all of our documents in, say, C. That way,
the user would run them through a C compiler and run the resulting executable
for viewing, and then the document could be rendered differently depending on
various criteria, such as the or the invoking user's UID, or using data
retrieved over a network socket. C is a more "powerful" language in this
respect than TeX. That doesn't mean that it works best.
> Please note that I'm not trying to convince you to use LaTeX for linux/debian
> documentation (unfortunately, it's probably too late). I'm just saying that
> your SGML vs LaTeX comparison is biased and too simplistic.
I don't think I'm particularly biased or simplistic: I use both tools for my
own documents, and my opinions are based on experience. I prefer SGML for
writing documentation.
I'm not trying to convince you to use SGML for anything, either. Just that
it has value for certain tasks.
--
- mdz
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