Re: DocBook roadmap?

[Ronald Hayden <rhayden@apple.com>]

> From: Peter Toft <pto@sslug.dk>
> Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 23:13:31 +0200 (CEST)
> Subject: DocBook roadmap?
> 
> I have now eight books in SGML/DocBook 3.1 running on
> Linux boxes. Should I consider to swap the source to
> XML at some point? What is the status on the XML
> DocBook resources??

I'm putting together the Darwin Documentation Project, and have been playing
with various DocBook XML solutions for a few months.  The current status, in
my experience so far, is that there are mature processing solutions as long
as you can use a Java-based solution.  This doesn't mean a Java application,
but Java commands that you call from the command-line.

The tools being used by the Darwin Doc Project are outlined here:

http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/documentation/howto/html/Darwin_Doc
_HOWTO.html#processing-xml

There are a number of C- and Perl-based XSLT processing solutions in the
works, but none of them that I've tried has successfully handled DocBook.
This will certainly change in the next 6-9 months, but that's where it is
now near as I can tell.

On the editing side, there isn't anything really better than just using
Emacs if you can stick with that.  Certainly nothing mature (that I've seen)
that a user not comfortable with tags is going to find very usable.  That
too will hopefully change in the next year.

Of course I'm interested in hearing if other's experience varies.

 -- Ron Hayden