[Bf-docboard] Re: Let's start again...

[Christian Plessl]

Craig Sanders wrote:
> DocBook is a good protocol - however as I'm sure you have noticed, there is
> distinct lack of tools for using it. Most authors working with DocBook are
> still hacking it directly using either vi or emacs. Works, but slow, slow,
> and then slow, plus limited formatting capability.
 > [....]
> Hence, my recommendation is to bite the bullet now and make the conversion
> to a tool that is available on all three major platforms (UNIX, Windows and
> Mac), can accept raw data from HTML, Word and many other major word
> processors, can output in print (postscript if necessary), PDF and online
> (HTML and PDF) formats, and is capable of working with very long documents.
> Namely, FrameMaker.

It might be that the lack of sophisticated tools and the deficits in 
layout control for Docbook has limited the number of contributors so 
far. So your suggestion to use some more sophisticated tool like 
Framemaker may make sense.

I don't intend to start a rant about tools, but before changing to some 
propriatery sofware solution I suggest to consider cross platform 
open-source alternatives.

An alternative to Framemaker would be to use LaTeX. LaTeX is available 
for almost any computing platform and has been around for decades. The 
major advantages of LaTeX are: It's a plain text format, open-source, 
front ends are available and the basic syntax is easy. Cross-referencing 
and index generation is done easily. Detailed layout control is possible 
but more complex. LaTeX can be used to generate PS,PDF and HTML.

Regards,
  Christian