Re: ANNOUCE: gTrouble - New project [summary]

["David C. Mason" <dcm redhat com>]

Tom Gilbert <gilbertt@tomgilbert.freeserve.co.uk> writes:


> o Would it be desirable for the Gnome2 help-browser to read DocBook sgml
>   directly? Is this a useful feature, or just a gimmick? (It would
>   simplify the compilation/installation of help).

Well, I think it would be useful for many reasons but foremost would
be the searching and indexing components. Html is simply a bad hack
and is based on formatting markup. SGML/XML are both based on content
based markup. The power this provides the user is immense. Think about
a simple search for documents written by Tom Gilbert you can use the
old method of searching the strings for Tom and Gilbert or you can
search SGML/XML files for:

<author>
  <firstname>Tom</firstname>
  <surname>Gilbert</surname>
</author>

and come up with a more accurate search. 


> o Although the help-browser would provide an interface to both types
>   of help, should/could the two types of data be integrated?
>   Should app-developers write one sgml file including both types of
>   help, or should the interactive help be stored separately from the
>   plain html help?
>   I like the idea of separate files. DocBook for plain help, xml for
>   interactive help.

I still don't think that creating a separate dtd is a good idea for
any case. I think that the use of DocBook XML would be much easier for
the use in a help browser and it would be *very* trivial to convert
DocBook SGML docs to DocBook XML docs.

DocBook XML is very up to date it just hasn't been used because no one
has built good parsing tools that can utilize DSSSL or XSL (hmmm,
something else you could write). If you want to learn more about
DocBook and the stylesheets for it you should head over to Norman
Walsh's page: http://nwalsh.com


> Or should we create a library for the rendering of the xml, and the
> running of built-in tests, and allow other environments to use this?

yes, this one.

Let me know what you need/want to know about SGML/XML.. it kinda my
*thing*.

Dave

-- 

          David Mason
        Red Hat AD Labs

        dcm@redhat.com