Re: ANNOUCE: gTrouble - New project [summary]

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

Daniel Veillard <Daniel.Veillard@w3.org> writes:

> > If you like XML, you like SGML. XML is a subset of SGML. If you look
> 
>     Maybe and no. XML forces more structure than SGML. I suggest to use
> the XML format instead of the SGML one since:
>   - an SGML parser can parse XML, not the way around
>   - XML enforce more structure on the document, hence ease the
>     reusability
>   - XML tools are numerous, usaully small, while SGML requires a more
>     heavy environment
>   - Doc in XML can be directly displayed in IE5 and Mozilla, if one
>     provide a stylesheet. It's not the case for SGML
> 
> > at dtds for XML that are based on the equivalent for SGML (DocBook is
> > one) you will see that they are practically the same except that the
> > XML versions usually have less tags available.


Actually I agree with you here. Its just that the other guy was saying
that he preferred the *markup* of XML over anything else.... which is
odd to say when comparing it to SGML.

I think you are wrong about XML tools though. There are not very many
tools available for XML document parsing that can utilize available
stylesheet formats to create outputs such as postscript, pdf, and even
html. I'm not saying we are overrun by SGML tools but at least I can
make ps out of DocBook SGML.

It is different in the Windows world, of course.


>   I suggest we investigate moving from DocBook/SGML to DocBook/XML,
> even Eve Maler the original author of DocBook has now switched to
> the XML version. I would be surprized we use some of the SGML only features
> and if not I can try to check with the DocBook authors for reintegration
> of those.

I am all for it as soon as someone writes a tool that will parse my
DocBook XML against my DSSSL stylesheets. Make sure it is flexible
enough to use XSL whenever it is standardized (not before then
please). Once this is done I'd be more than happy to change the header
of my documents to say <?xml blah>, but for now I'll use something
that I *can* actually use.

Dave

-- 

          David Mason
        Red Hat AD Labs

        dcm@redhat.com