discuss: Processing doco - and other links in the LAG (was Re: db2omf)
Subject:
RE: Processing doco - and other links in the LAG (was Re: db2omf)
From:
Steven Peck ####@####.####
Date:
9 Mar 2001 21:50:45 -0000
Message-Id: <BB075B4F0B35914D80AFAF86E17BF34F063D16@base.blkmtn.org>
As a complete neo-phyte to the documentation process as outlined in DOcBook
stuff and to Linux/UNIX in general, I will admit to being completely
bewildered and confused by the current HowTo's. I am slowly and painfully
allieveating this, but it has been a hard and twisted road. All of the
documentation on the subject assumes a vocabulary that is just not present
in some folks crossing over from a win32 world. Heck, it took me a bit to
figure out that the 'mark-up' language was a varient on html by hand. Some
things started to make sense after that.
Now I am fairly good at implementing and maintaining an array of MS
solutions and a bit on the general networing side of things. I am getting
into Linux and have written some brief and specific guides to the current
project I am involved with. I am working on updating and revising a how to
for an older version and our coordinator suggested DocBook format off of
LDP. SO I figured what the heck and spent the next 2 weeks trudging my way
through various docs and making no progress on my how to as the existing
documentation was so Linux/UNIX background specific that I finally said to
hell with it. I'm going to write my docs in plain text in a windows editor
and convert to DocBook after the fact. And no, I do not have access to
Framemaker +SGML. Once I figured out to search for XML editors I found
some, but nothing that looked easy to use.
My steps were to look at the how to. (I gave up on emacs, I can figure out
vi, but emacs? I don't have that much free time at the moment). I went and
read lots of stuff on the links. Figured out some of it, was confused by
others. Installed the win32 version of OpenJade and tried to make it work
on the templates from your LDP authors site, but finally gave up on it. All
the instructions seem to obviously written with an assumption of a Linux
viewpoint.
I realize that your target audience for most of this stuff is Linux/UNIX,
but the learning curve transistioning over from windows is incredibly high.
I can't nuke my primary windows system, as I test on it and windows pays my
bills, so some info on low cost/free tools methods for windows stuff would
be useful. If I ever figure it out, I'll probably paste something together,
but not in the next month.
----------------------------------------------
Steven Peck ####@####.####
Sacramento, CA leaf.blkmtn.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Ferguson
To: David Merrill; LDP-Discuss
Sent: 3/9/2001 9:34 AM
Subject: Re: Processing doco - and other links in the LAG (was Re: db2omf)
On Mar 9, 12:35pm, David Merrill wrote:
> Subject: Re: Processing doco - and other links in the LAG (was Re:
db2omf)
> On Fri, Mar 09, 2001 at 11:24:07AM -0600, Patrick K. O'Brien wrote:
> > I am in the middle of writing exactly what you suggest. I figured
> > that while I'm still suffering as a "new author" I have the proper
> > perspective to write for other newbies. So I'm writing as I go,
> > before I lose my virginity, so to speak. I'm starting from the
> > assumption that my reader wants to start writing as soon as
> > possible and wants to use free tools. So I start with Emacs/Xemacs
> > (with psgml) and go from there. I'm focusing on the latest XML
> > version of DocBook and downplaying the SGML heritage. I hope to
> > have this done by the end of next week, followed by the article
> > and book templates and Python programs to generate OMF stuff the
> > following week.
>
> Great, thanks for letting us know.
Robert Easter also completed a similar document:
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/DocBook-Install/
Before we get a plethora of these type of docs, might want to
consider consolidating into one (or two) docs.
just a thought,
Ferg
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