Re: DocBook (isn't it sgml-tools1.1 ?)

[Alexander Kjeldaas <astor guardian no>]

On Wed, Sep 09, 1998 at 10:07:51AM +0200, Bertrand Guiheneuf wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> Sorry if this question has been asked hundred times before...
> 
> I took a look at the davenport page and at the sgmltools page
> (http://www.sgmltools.org/)
> and as far as I understood the informations there, DocBook is only a dtd
> whereas the tools used to process the documents are form the sgmltools
> project (jade?). 
> 
> So, would someone with enough knowledge explain me why Gnome'rs always refer
> to DocBook instead of sgmltool 1.1.
> 
> If the answer is that it is only a matter of vocabulary, can the official
> sgml-tools1.1 dist be used for formatting our doc.
> 

The sgmltools web-page is really confusing.  The fact is that you
don't need anything from sgmltools to use DocBook.  It seems that
sgmltools is a set of tools to support their old DTD which nobody
really wants to use anymore.

Initially, sgmltools used a lot of scripts and hacks to produce HTML,
TeX etc from the LinuxDoc SGML DTD.  However, after jade was
implemented, all these scripts were obsolete.  Jade is an
implementation of DSSSL which is a functional scheme-like language
used to operate on an SGML-file.  DSSSL is also an ISO-standard.  The
file is represented internally as a tree that you can traverse in
scheme.  It is _very_ neat!

What makes it confusing for me is that sgmltools seems to start to use
DocBook.  Now there are _already_ backends for jade (which is
unrelated to sgmltools) that produces Postscript, TeX, and HTML-output
so I don't understand what role sgmltools is supposed to play.  To me
it seems that sgmltools is a software package that has no use anymore
except for legacy support for LinuxDoc documents.

astor

-- 
 Alexander Kjeldaas, Guardian Networks AS, Trondheim, Norway
 http://www.guardian.no/