XML Docbook

Hi,

what use pure XML Docbook (non-SGML) for 7.5 PostgreSQL docs?

XML advantage:

- more clean and simple conversion into printable
formats by FO (Formatting Objects),
- needn't huge TeX stuff (!),
- Java based XSLT/FO processors like FOP (support PDF, PCL, PS, SVG, Print,
AWT, MIF and TXT),
- conversion to HTML/MAN/etc by xsltproc,
- XML based reference docs is usable for example in clients programs as
standard help, because integrate XML parser into program is more simple and
usual than SGML parser.

I think the current docs build system is usable for normal user only if he wants
to generate HTML docs, but for example it's useless if he wants PDF output...

For example you can compare our current doc/src/sgml/Makefile with following
code for XML conversion:

pdf:
fop -xsl /path/to/stylesheet/xsl/fo/docbook.xsl -xml book.xml -pdf book.pdf

ps:
fop -xsl /path/to/stylesheet/xsl/fo/docbook.xsl -xml book.xml -ps book.ps

html:
xsltproc -o htmldir/ /path/to/stylesheet/html/chunk.xsl book.xml

man:
xsltproc /path/to/stylesheet/manpages/docbook.xsl ref.xml

Comments?

Karel
--
Karel Zak <zakkr(at)zf(dot)jcu(dot)cz>
http://home.zf.jcu.cz/~zakkr/