Re: offtopic: which text language to use?

[Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org>]

"A.R. (Tom) Peters" <tpeters@xs4all.nl> writes:

> Docbook, exactly like HTML was meant to be, does NOT allow you to tweak
> appearance.

It does, if you change the stylesheets you're using.

> Text processors do force you to create a document in a consistent,
> structured way with uniform final appearence.

Correct, but there's no reason you can't change that final appearance.

Now, if you meant that you can't micromanage appearance, that's very
true.  You can't move a bad page break without changing the style
sheets, or fix where figures appear without changing the mechanism
that placed them.

> If you want to design printed output, use a wordprocessor.

I'd personally suggest something like FrameMaker or Interleaf, which
have many of the advantages of docbook or latex for technical
documents, but are less widely used than Word.

-- 
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - In a variety of flavors!
Do unto others before they undo you.