Re: [Fwd: [Fwd: First Open Source Documentation Summit at the O'R eilly Open Source Convention]]

[Guylhem Aznar <guylhem@bigfoot.com>]

On Wed, Jul 19, 2000 at 10:49:32AM -0700, Gregory Leblanc wrote:
> > The LDP currently uses its own set of tools, the linuxdoctools
> > (the former sgmltools1) since docbook is not considered ready to use.
> 
> WHAT?!?!?!?  DocBook is in use for quite a few of the LDP documents.  The
> LDP Author Guide, the Cable-Modem HOWTO, the Linux FAQ, and others.
> These are all DocBook native documents.  We have satisfactory output
> for all of the formats that we could produce from Linuxdoc, although
> we're still making improvements.  

What I meant is all the HOWTOs are not using DocBook as their native
format.

We *do* support docbook, but we haven't moved to full docbook yet, until
we can convert each document, help each author, provide ascii output...

It is on the agenda, but it is not ready to use.

> The tools work fine on metalab where the processing is done, and for the
> most part, are easy to get running using the instructions in the LAG.  You
> need to go read that, and keep up on the LDP list a little better.

I do read the list (I do not reply very often though) and I keep
considering the DocBook tools not ready for common day use.

Does each author knows how to use it? Can you make a clean txt output
(no, not lynx -dump)

> Yes, and this team will continue to be in existence for a very long time, as
> long as we're still using DocBook.  Things will evolve, and we'll have to
> change the tools to make things better.  

That's the idea. We will have the tools necessary to move completely
from linuxdoc to docbook.
 
> We support both RIGHT NOW, and all of our documents are available in
> DocBook.  The documents written in Linuxdoc are run through a primitive

I know, I made the conversion and wrote the sgml2docbook script.

> conversion script that creates DocBook from that, in order to make it easier
> for authors to make the transition to DocBook.

But the output is far from perfect, and we should hand fix the
documents.

> > Docbook documents are already accepted, but they are 
> > separated from the
> > linuxdoc HOWTOs.
> 
> Not really, they're part of the LDP repository just like everything else.
> They have the same output formats available as the LinuxDoc HOWTOs, so for
> the end user, they are the same.

Yup, but they are not HOWTOs in the "standard way" since they are
processed with different tools.

The day when all the HOWTOs will be processed with docbook tools, I'll
say that we now fully support docbook and will drop linuxdoc.

-- 
Guylhem P. Aznar                               http://www.linuxdoc.org
guylhem \@/ metalab.unc.edu                    http://www.iMedecin.com
"They who can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."  -----  Benjamin Franklin


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