Re: [HIG] Mini-Guidelines style

[Adam Elman <aelman users sourceforge net>]

At 6:59 PM +0100 8/15/01, colin z robertson wrote:
> Ah, so that puts us at three people unfamiliar and one familiar with
> docbook. hmm. But as Maciej says, we need to have the final document
> in docbook.
>
> Basically docbook is fairly simple. If you're familiar with html or
> other sgml languages you should be able to pick it up pretty quickly.
> There are two tricky things about it: Firstly, the GDP have a set of
> guidelines about how to use all the nifty tags for describing elements
> of GUIs, and secondly, the tools for transforming from docbook to
> other formats are a pain.
> [...]
> And again, the way to deal with the second problem is to ignore it.
> When I started working with docbook I didn't have the tools set up on
> my box. I just wrote docbook code and assumed that other people would
> be able to transform it as required. If, on the other hand, you do
> want to install the tools, feel free to ask me if you're having
> problems.

I agree with ignoring the first problem; I'm a little concerned about 
the second.

It's nice and all to just assume that other people can transform your 
SGML, but it's way, way too easy to write bad SGML if you don't have 
a way to transform it.  (I have much experience with this in a 
previous life.)  I don't think that's an acceptable solution.  I, for 
one, also find it difficult to proofread non-WYSIWYG content, 
especially with external figures.

We need to set up a build system which will generate HTML versions so 
we can see the output, or something, otherwise we're going to run 
into problems.  Maciej, did you say you thought that would be 
feasible?

Thanks,
Adam
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