discuss: LinuxDoc vs. DocBook, was Re: part of the review?
Subject:
Re: LinuxDoc vs. DocBook, was Re: part of the review?
From:
Poet/Joshua Drake ####@####.####
Date:
18 Jul 2001 15:35:54 -0000
Message-Id: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107180825420.11386-100000@commandprompt.com>
On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, David Lawyer wrote:
>On Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 10:11:57PM -0700, David Lawyer wrote:
>> Some things are facts: Here is a comparison of LinuxDoc vs DocBook:
>
>Now that we've hopefully establish that LinuxDoc is easier and faster
>to type in and cleaner to read, let's discuss the other issues.
But you haven't. Other people have already say that it is not easier to
read. Not just me.
>I'm not saying that LinuxDoc is better in every way. It isn't, but
>it's useful for authors that want to get started very quickly.
>LinuxDoc is both a lot faster to learn and faster to use.
I still disagree with this. DocBook is not difficult to learn.
>A major point is that LinuxDoc can be converted by machine to DocBook.
No it can't. Have you looked at the translations it does? LinuxDoc to
DocBook is horrible and will not validate after conversion.
>So my argument is that by machine converting all LinuxDoc submissions
>to DocBook, then all the arguments that DocBook is needed become moot
>points since LinuxDoc generates DocBook. If certain tags become
>essential that are not in LinuxDoc, then add them to LinuxDoc.
Except that there is no basis for the argument. Everything you have
brought up has been refuted by more than one person.
>Now I would like to mention how it's easy to learn several tags. But
>if you double the number of tags it may be more than twice as
>difficult. That's because the most important tags are obvious to
>people. As one adds more tags they become less obvious. One hardly
>needs to explain what <title>, <author>, and <date> tags mean. Every
>doc needs to have a title, author, and date.
Yes, and every doc SHOULD have a title author and date but you are wrong.
An author or date tag is not required.
>Also I think that LinuxDoc needs to be promoted to the public at large
>as a simple way to write all kinds of short works using free software.
>It could be used by small business and organizations.
Again, I think this is a mistake. LinuxDoc is dead. We are currently the
only major project that still uses it (That I know of) and even we are
quickly migrating to DocBook for most things.
>It was proposed that to simplify things one could use a small subset
>of the DocBook tags. This is still too difficult due to:
>
>1. The need for end tags
>2. The need for paragraph tags (LinuxDoc doesn't need them)
>3. The need for nested tags (resulting in more tags).
>4. The longer length of the tags
Cough... I am sorry, but your arguments don't make sense. You are saying
that it is better to have unsupported, badly formatted, non-standard
markup versus, highly flexibly, structured, standard, strongly supported
markup.
That doesn't wash.
>If an author has to spend hours learning DocBook and still more extra
>time writing with it, that's wrong in many cases. If you are
It doesn't take hours to learn DocBook. Use Simplified Docbook if you
like. Don't use all the tags.
>just writing several pages (or even just a page or two) it just isn't
>a productive use of time to learn DocBook. The result of pushing
>DocBook is fewer new volunteer LDP authors.
Then why, since we have been pushing DocBook has our author and content
count gone up?
Joshua Drake
>
> David Lawyer
>
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<WEBMASTER>LDP - http://www.linuxdoc.org </WEBMASTER>
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Instead of asking why a piece of software is using "1970s technology,"
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