On 19 Jul 2000, Oleg Polyanski wrote:

> Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@zembu.com> writes:
> 
>         I think SGML  (DocBook DTD when we  speak about programming or system
>         documentation) would be the best choice: ability to get in the output
>         almost any reasonable format (plain text, TeX, html, xml, PostScript,
>         PDF or what you really want) is a big win. I see only two dark sides:
> 
>         * converting between SGML   and requested format  is relatively  slow
>           especially on the old or slow technique (but we could have at least
>           preformatted  text manuals and  use   them instead of  direct  SGML
>           processing).  Even more,  PostScript and PDF  require TeX installed
>           somewhere.
> 
>         * SGML processor should imported into system source tree and requires
>           maintaining. At least sometimes.

I think these dark sides are quite dark actually. :-) While I think
DocBook is great for how-to's & such, I don't think we're there yet for
turning all of the man pages into it.

Needing TeX in the base install is a big downer. While I LOVE LaTeX and
would use it almost exclusivly, I don't think it's appropriate for the
main system.

Are there any SGML editing tools? There's LyX for LaTeX, but I've seen
nothing for SGML or DocBook.

Also, to further muddle the waters, you can get DocBook for xml too. :-)

Take care,

Bill