Re: Detecting stylesheets and DTDs

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Sat, Jan 19, 2002 at 05:45:46PM -0500, Daniel Veillard wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 19, 2002 at 05:41:51PM -0500, Jody Goldberg wrote:
> > Actually, let me take this one step further.  Can the gnome-doc
> > package supply a fully self contained set of style sheets, dtds, and
> > catalogs ?  Ideally it would also include a gnome-doc-build script
> 
>   And KDE Does one, and the LDP does one and ...
> Of course all based on the same DocBook stylesheet withe customization
> layers. 
>   No way in hell ... One installtion for the Dtd, one of the stylesheets
> and one catalog. Then you add only the project specific customization
> layers in the package,

I understand that this is the appropriate moral high ground.
However, from an application perspective this has been a complete
and total failure.  In the run up to gnumeric 1.0 we realized that
of the major developers and documenters almost none of us would
produce the same set of documentation.  Some people could not build
some had variations on a style sheet.  Gregory Leblanc came by and
installed some scripts for us to solve the problem, they did not.

While it would be nice to do the right thing, I'll settle for
something that works.   You want to install style sheets in central
place ?  Fine, but please can we have a gnome package that include
ALL of the style sheets that we need.  Even if these are duplicates
of things from standard distributions.  If not then the doc package
had better howl loudly and complain if any style-sheet is missing,
or has a different version than expected.

The applications are each being forced to solve the same problem
and we are doing it badly.  Please centralize this so that there is
a reliable base to depend on.