Re: (sgml vs XML)+indexing

[Ali Abdin <aliabdin aucegypt edu>]

* John Sheehan (John Sheehan ireland sun com) wrote at 23:03 on 25/10/00:
> Eric Baudais wrote:
> > 
> > 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.
> > 
> Solbook is SGML based and is indeed a subset of Docbook, so it's simple to 
> convert to Docbook, but not in the opposite direction since the GDP use 
> certain inline tags which are not in SolBook. 

So Solbook is based on DocBook SGML? Then why is Laszlo advocating for us to
switch to DocBook XML instead of our current DocBook SGML?

What are the differences between DocBook and SolBook?
 
> > 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.
> > 
> 
> Sun is extending SolBook to include the extra inline tags used by the GDP.
> And we are creating filters for the metadata to allow us to flip a doc in
> DocBook to SolBook and back again.  The reason we want to work internally 
> in Solbook is that all the back-end corporate tools for editing, publishing, 
> and localisation are based on the SolBook DTD.  But with the filters we can 
> issue and exchange Gnome docs in DocBook.  

I can understand this, but I do not think that it is really appropriate
for us to use Solbook.

DocBook has been agreed upon by many Linux projects (Linux Documentation
Project, KDE, GNOME, (its being used for kernel API documentation). It
wouldn't be in GNOME's best interest to say "We shall switch to SolBook now",
even though we made a commitment to DocBook.

Besides that all our tools are based around DocBook :)

So the info I would like to know is:

1) What is the difference between DocBook and SolBook (we can try to
accomodate SolBook)? Can you make some sample SolBook files available (John
Fleck has been doing extensive documentation testing for me, and from this
testing i add stuff to gnome-db2html2)

2) Can you look at John fleck's prior mail where he tells you look at
gnome-db2html2's supported tags and see what you need? (or provide him with
sample SolBook docs so he can figure it out for you guys).

By the way - isn't the ScrollKeeper project supposed to /solve/ the indexing
problem (by indexing documentation Metadata)?

Regards,
Ali