Re: Successor to DocBook

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Tue, 2006-07-11 at 10:53 +0200, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
> Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> writes:
> 
> > I had originally intended to make a topic-oriented format that
> > used DocBook as its within-the-page content model.  Use the same
> > block and inline elements, etc.  Years of working with DocBook,
> > both as a writer and an implementor, have convinced me that this
> > will cause more harm than good.
> 
> I think different.  Just eliminate all elements you do not need and
> avoid the nesting of block elements.  Why forcing the writer to learn
> new tag names?  It would also be nice if you could process the topic
> oriented documentation files with existing tools.
> 
> Otherwise DITA already exists.  Maybe, a DITA subset would do the trick?

All right, so we eliminate the elements we don't need.  Then we
also have to add the elements we do need.  And we have some odd
names, because some elements have the names they do because they
were supposed to be used in conjunction with elements that we've
dropped.

Why not just give all the elements simple and consistent names
to begin with?  Nobody can even remember the DocBook elements,
so what's the point of catering to that experience?

Anyway, many of the elements do have the same names.  They have
the same names where those names make sense.  I'm not going to
use weird names just to be different.

As for existing tools, no existing tool is going to get the
link mapping correct.  You might get some formatting fluff
for free, but that sort of stuff is labor cheap compared to
the rest of the work involved.

As for DITA, anybody here is welcome to create a DITA-based
help tool chain for Gnome.  Cook up the tools and present
the format.  Teach the writers.  Prove me wrong.  But I'm
not blowing any more of my development time trying to gut
a beast that was designed to solve too many problems.

People seem to think that this is nothing more than simpler
DocBook.  It's not.  It has nothing to do with DocBook, and
there's no reason to pretend it does.  I should call it MIND:
MIND Is Not DocBook.

--
Shaun