Re: gnome-doc package

[Eric Baudais <baudais okstate edu>]

On Mon, Mar 11, 2002 at 09:00:12PM -0700, John Fleck wrote:
> Folks -
> 
> Sorry for letting this languish for so long, but the discussion of a
> "gnome-docs" package kind of petered out along about the time Sasha
> and DV argued (Sasha rather persuasively, I thought, while DV, the
> voice of authority, simply nodded his head) against installing our
> own copies of the DocBook DTD and stylesheets.
> 
> I agree now that, despite the attractiveness of having control of the
> DocBook elements, down that path lies trouble for users who've got
> another package installed that already contains the DTD and
> stylesheet.

Most distrobutions have the Docbook XML DTD and stylesheets packaged.  Even if 
we don't agree with where they put them this really isn't a place for us to 
interfere.

I think that where the stylesheets and DTD are located is not as important as 
ensuring that the user has a XML catalog working so the DTD and stylesheets 
can be looked up locally by xsltproc.

> As I see it, this leaves two issues, then:
> 
> 1) The "xmldocs.make", "sgmldocs.make" bits
> 
> 2) How to ensure that the DTD/stylesheet are properly installed and
>    registered with the catalog

The DocBook help converter is residing in libgnome right now.  If we are 
serious about making this package then I think it would make sense to move the 
help converters out of libgnome and into gnome-doc or whatever we call it.  

The goals of this package, as I see it, is to contain all the stuff necessary 
to insure the user has a working documentation environment.  This would 
include the help converters and possibly an OMF generator we decide to 
include later.

Eric Baudais