Re: doc-i18n-tool

[Damien Donlon Sun COM]

Hi All,
Please see my comments :

>
>> [ seems it's time I subscribe to gnome-i18n, done, Daniel ]
>> 
>> On Wed, Oct 10, 2001 at 03:06:36PM -0400, Jonathan Blandford wrote:
>> > Damien Donlon - Sun Microsystems Ireland - Solaris Software - Software Engineer <Damien.Donlon@Sun.COM> writes:
>> > > So, we can use this to generate a DocBook XML file
>> > > from an existing DocBook SGML file by doing :
>> > > 
>> > > DocBook SGML -> .pot -> DocBook XML ?
>> > 
>> > DocBook SGML -> .pot
>> > DocBook SGML + .pot -> Translated DocBook SGML
>> > 
>> > The actual format/structure of the document doesn't change.

OK. Perhaps I should explain my specific concern a bit more, if only for
my own peace of mind....

We have a small number of SGML translated help files which were used 
to check multi-byte character rendering in Nautilus packaged with 
Gnome 1.4. Nautilus for Gnome 2.0 is to use DocBook XML formatted  
help files for rendering as opposed to DocBook SGML.
The change introduces a small possibility of degradation of multi-byte
character support in Nautilus. I understand that with Pango and the libxml2 
hack already mentioned any degradation is unlikely but I don't know how 
extensively it has been tested (any info. on this greatly appreciated).
So, the ability to convert from DocBook SGML to DocBook XML on existing files would be useful from the point of view of testing. At this point,I have 
no idea what sort of programming undertaking this entails.

The other point is that while the ability to render both the SGML and XML 
correctly is desirable, the ability to convert to DocBook XML can only facilitate doc translation because translating SGML docs can be awkward 
(particularly if you are not an EMACs or Adept user). As decent freeware 
XML editors become available, I'd rather give translators XML if possible.

Regards,
Damien





>> 
>>   Well actually saving the xmlDocTree produced from parsing
>> the SGML is far more likely to look like XML in the end than
>> SGML. I would actually prefer that personally !
>
>We'd need to spit it out with a different DTD though, right?  Can you
>change the DtD on an xmlDocTree??
>
>> > > Also, do you happen to know whether the move to DocBook XML 
>> > > is *absolutely* definite now for Gnome 2.0? Is there a schedule 
>> > > for the changover i.e for when XML format docs have to go into 
>> > > the CVS tree based on the most recent Gnome 2.0 schedule?
>> > 
>> > This is up to the doc guys.  Any comments?
>> 
>>   Yep it's pretty sure. The fact that libxml2 was hacked to add read
>> capacity for DocBook SGML is one of the obvious reasons.
>
>Sounds good.  It needs to actually happen though. (-:
>
>-Jonathan
>