Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Re: Generating Indexes

[Alexander Schatten <alasan at gmx dot net>]

Norman Walsh wrote:

> 
> The Guide doesn't describe any of the XSL tools. What do you find confusing
> about the description of indexterms or indexes?
> 


well, this may be part of the problem. I think there is a big demand in 
docbook, but the problem is, that most user want to write their 
documents and publish them.

the docbook guide is good for developers, people who know xsl, dsssl, 
... very good, but hardly usable for "writers".

so a "writer" wants to it down, start the editor, write his stuff 
(therefor he needs a reference, tutorial, ... as long as there are no 
docbook editors available) and then wants to press the publish button to 
generate HTML and PDF:

this is currently not possible at all. you really need to be a hacker to 
get the publishing thing running, and you have to be (at best) a Java, 
XSL, DSSSL and LaTeX expert.

here we find (at least in my opinion) a similar problem as also 
discussed in the Cocoon mailing list: it was extremly difficult to 
install Cocoon 1.8 under tomcat 3 (mainly because of this terrible 
xerces). so what I did for my courses is to make a tomcat/cocoon 
distribution which unzips and starts in 1 minute.

such a distribution is still not available for cocoon, though it would 
be a work of 5 minutes for a cocoon developer.

same in docbook.

imho at least 2 things would be necessary:

(1) a "unzip and go" docbook distribution containing e.g.:

- JEdit + XML package
- docbook DTD
- docbook xsl
- xalan
- fop
- ant
- example scripts to generate pdf and html

(2) an "docbook for dummies" intro, that explains how to install this 
package including a few example documents (diploma thesis, book, ...) 
and how to use all the tools.


Alex