Re: (sgml vs XML)+indexing

[Eric Baudais <baudais okstate edu>]

On Thu, Oct 26, 2000 at 01:10:22AM +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Laszlo Kovacs">
> 
> > He asked me why Gnome still uses DocBook as XML is more superior to that.
> > He mentioned that conversion from DocBook to XML should be easy.
> </quote>
> 
> Perhaps DocBook SGML vs. DocBook XML is what Jacek means? I've just recently
> heard - from Michael McElree, a Sun guy who very kindly offered to work with
> me on the evil Sawfish capplet docs - that Sun use SolBook, a subset of
> DocBook XML.

I think that the conversion from SolBook to DocBook wouldn't be too hard.  If 
SolBook is a subset of DocBook it should use about the same tags, so the 
conversion shouldn't be too hard.

I would strongly advise against changing all the GDP docs to SolBook or any other 
DTD because that would be too much work for not much gain.  If it came to surface 
that there are problems with the DocBook DTD, we can bring them up with OASIS.  I 
would much rather see the GDP help improve DocBook (which is actively developed) 
then switch to another DTD.

> > I don't know much about XML vs DocBook issues so I couldnt answer
> > Jacek's main question (why still DocBook?).
> 
> 
> Because DocBook rocks! :)

When the GDP started writing docs for Gnome they used DocBook because it was 
the best DTD available for technical writing at the time.  The DTD has 
continued to expand (not too much) and evolve into a first class set of markup 
tags.
 
> The GDP seems to be sticking with DocBook SGML for a while (mostly because
> of toolset issues), but trying to keep XML compatibility. This is the best
> way to go at the moment

Yes, we want to be able to make printed copies of our docs as well as html 
versions of them.  Currently there is no tool (to my knowledge) to make PS or PDFs.
We also want to be able to validate our docs, like nsgml does for DocBook SGML.  
Again I do not believe that there are any tools for this.

I think that when we can make printed and html copies of DocBook XML and also 
be able to validate it we can start to think about switching to Docbook XML.

In the meantime we are able to view XML documents with the Nautilus help viewer and 
can convert the Sun documents from SolBook to DocBook.

Eric Baudais