discuss: part of the review?
Subject:
Re: part of the review?
From:
David Lawyer ####@####.####
Date:
14 Jul 2001 22:37:26 -0000
Message-Id: <20010714152732.B1019@lafn.org>
On Sun, Jul 08, 2001 at 03:45:12PM -0400, David Merrill wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 07, 2001 at 01:17:16PM -0700, Poet/Joshua Drake wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > It makes sense as a natural progression to move to DocBook. It will
> > happen it just takes time for everyone to be comfortable with it. This is
> > why I suggest the following:
> >
> > 1. All new authors must use DocBook
> > 2. If a new author is taking over an unmaintained document that is in
> > LinuxDoc. The author may opt to use LinuxDoc.
> >
> > 3. Existing documents that are in LinuxDoc may be kept in LinuxDoc, but
> > you should move your document to DocBook when possible.
> >
> > 4. All NEW documents should be in Docbook. We can use the simplified
> > DocBook DTD if required.
>
> Can we please just `highly recommend' docbook, and make sure authors
I would like us to be neutral as to the choice of docbook vs linuxdoc.
Each have their pros and cons.
> know their documents may not wind up fully supported in the
> distributions. The indexing and cataloging being done by kde and gnome
> only handles docbook, so other formats won't be fully supported.
Why not? What about the linuxdoc docs that are automatically
converted to docbook?
> author likes linuxdoc enough to accept that, let them.
>
> I agree with you, Poet, that docbook is far superior to linuxdoc. and
> it's *not* harder to write. The 200+ tags are imposing, but in reality
> you only use about 20 of them, and only about 10 in regular use. The
> other 10 exist only in the header stuff, and you can cut-and-paste
> that from another document, replacing the data. It just isn't that
> hard.
Sorry but it's a lot harder to write. We should encourage prospective
authors to use LinuxDoc and show them just how simple it is. Of course
they are also free to choose DocBook. Many docs are out-of-date and
the authors could more profitably spend their time revising their docs
instead of converting them to docbook (including possible problems
with the docbook tools).
> The *tools* are the bitch, and the docbook processor removes that
> problem. Very few people are using it, which means either people
> aren't having as much trouble as we thought with their tools, or it
> isn't publicized enough.
This is another advantage of LinuxDoc. It's a more convenient to
check out your formatting on your own machine. Still another
advantage of LinuxDoc is that the tools work fine on old PCs with
limited resources.
David Lawyer
