Re: Successor to DocBook

[Matthew East <mdke ubuntu com>]

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Hi,

* Don Scorgie:
> (Resend.  Hopefully it'll go through this time)
>
> On Fri, 2006-07-07 at 13:45 -0500, Shaun McCance wrote:
>> On Fri, 2006-07-07 at 14:19 +0200, karderio wrote:
> <snip>
>> Now here's everybody's first chance to get in on the fun:
>> The code name for the project-as-a-whole is Project Mallard.
>> This is sort of an inside poke at DocBook.  But Mallard is
>> a dumb name for a help format.  So everybody:
>>
>> NAME MY XML FORMAT!

I am really happy that lots of thought and action seems to be happening
in relation to improving the structure of the help system and making it
easier to have upstream and distro documentation sitting alongside each
other.

However, if I might add a word of caution. I have not seen anything in
the recent threads which documents *why* a move away from docbook is
actually necessary for a better help system to work.

I haven't seen any discussion of it either.

I have to say, that with all the progress that has been made on the
toolset around docbook [1], a sudden move away from docbook just feels
slightly like moving the goalposts.

[1] Especially the fact that we will soon have tools available to allow
people to work on a WYSIWYG basis in a collaborative way (via a Moin
wiki) and produce docbook.

This isn't really a criticism, but I'd really like to know why docbook
has been rejected as inadequate for the implementation of a modular help
system. I'm not attached to a particular format as such, but I think
that now that some good work has been put in to supporting docbook, I'd
like to see a move away from it justified more carefully.

Matt
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