Re: Switching to XML

Joshua D. Drake a écrit :
> On Fri, 2006-12-08 at 21:58 +0100, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
>> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>>> You can create, edit, convert, save, and open docbook xml in
>>> OpenOfice.org.
>> Sure, there are more editing options with DocBook XML. No one disputes
>> that. But the question at hand was about processing the DocBook.
>
> Yes which is generated from our use of SGML which is the core of this
> problem and the core of the question as a whole.
>
> SGML is making working with the documentation *harder*.
>

+1

> We have people that *DO NOT* contribute because of this SGML
> requirement. They have what I consider extremely valid reasons, namely
> it is dumb to require a writer to use emacs or write tags explictly.
>
> Hell, the only reason I have even bothered to contribute what little I
> have to the docs is because I wrote a book in SGML, thus it is a no
> brainer to me. Others aren't so tortured as to have done the same.
>

I'm not so sure it will help you find more contributors. I'm part of a
project which aims to translate HOWTO from TLDP. They don't find
contributors and we too have really hard times to find contributors
despite the fact we try to only use DocBook XML (TLDP use DocBook SGML,
DocBook XML and LinuxDoc formats).

Did you try to use OpenOffice.org with DocBook ? I tried once and it was
a complete disaster. But it was a long time ago. I will try again this
week-end.

> There is a long standing support within the community to move to XML
> including:
>
> Josh Berkus
> Josh Drake
> Robert Treat
> Andrew Dunslane
> David Blewett
> David Fetter
> Devrim Gunduz
> Darcy Buskermolen
>
> And that is just from #postgresql
>
> The french team also uses Docbook XML and they can generate a PDF in 30
> minutes... it takes us DAYS because of the SGML.
>

In fact, we need 15 minutes to build HTML files and 10 minutes to build
PDF file. To be completely honest, I don't seem to be able to build PDF
file for 8.2.0 release. I must have made a mistake (or perhaps a lot of
:) ).

Regards.

--
Guillaume.
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