From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: David Mason To: Norman Walsh Cc: docbook-tools-discuss@sourceware.cygnus.com Subject: Re: was something else - now SGML and XML Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 06:36:00 -0000 Message-id: <200002231626.LAA20967@devserv.devel.redhat.com> References: <951281049.19725.ezmlm@sourceware.cygnus.com> X-SW-Source: 2000/msg00078.html < 200002231540.KAA08528@devserv.devel.redhat.com > < 7453-Wed23Feb2000110215-0500-ndw@nwalsh.com > X-URL: < http://www.redhat.com > From: "David C. Mason" Date: 23 Feb 2000 11:26:42 -0500 Message-ID: Lines: 52 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.5 Norman Walsh writes: > There are some authoring changes (system identifiers, empty tag > syntax, etc.), but the only thing the tools have to do > differently is pass an appropriate SGML declaration to, e.g., > Jade. Like I said - this is true. I know that. But something like empty tag syntax is something that will affect the writer when then finally change the heading on their doc and wonder why the hell it gets errors. The problem is not that I can't handle the changes coming or work around the available tools to work with XML - I can - but the new contributor to the doc project I work on who happens to have come from the Word Processor world and just can't quite grasp this stuff needs a little more help than what jade and XT provide. And to try to merge someone who is willing to help through changes like you mention above sometimes means losing that volunteer. I spend most of my time figuring out how to keep them around and not scare them off. DocBook itself sometimes scares them off without even trying it out. > I'm doing everything I do with XML using Jade and XT. Well, > except for editing which I sometimes use, um, Arbortext products > for, no surprise, and they aren't available for Linux (more's > the pity) but they sure are available for Unix. When is that port coming anyway? ;) > I'll save some of my wilder theories for a chat over a beer some > night, but the simpler answer is that the new tools are coming > along because XML is easier to process than SGML. XML is mostly > marketing. > > New tools *don't have to be written*. All your existing SGML > tools work just fine. So the beer I'm up for - but are you telling me that Jade will parse XML against XSL? It doesn't do that and, it won't do that anytime soon as far as I can tell. XT is fine if you want to write code around it to do some parsing testing but its not finished, and like I said - its a new tool being written. Its very similar situation to the introduction of XSL - which, on the surface, appears to be a rewrite of dsssl with < >'s so that people will understand it better (or something). Its introduction is not only stealing away from the work done on dsssl tools, but as you say yourself "They would also work just fine with the straight DocBook DTD, but I'm not aware of any XSL processors that parse SGML documents." - well DocBook XML *is* SGML isnt it? :) Dave