Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Experiences as Authors

[Arno Sosna <arnonym at subdimension dot com>]

---- Original Message ----
From: "Stephan Wiesner" <stephan@stephan-wiesner.de>
To: <docbook-apps@lists.oasis-open.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 28, 2002 7:53 PM
Subject: DOCBOOK-APPS: Experiences as Authors

> Hi list,
> I would like to get some feedback on how others actually write their
> documents. And I don't mean those with one or two DocBook documents,
> but
> those with tons of them.
>
> Of special interest is: how do you handle stuff that reappears like
> biblioentries, glossary, quotes, about the author. How do you keep
> it up
> to date if it is included/refrenced in different documents.
>
>
> To get started, I will now describe how I do it. However, otherwise I
> would not write this mail, I am not really happy with this.
>
> I wrote a tool that helps me manage my glossary, bibliography and
> blockquotes and just copy those elements I need to a new document.
> This
> works very good, except when I have to change something and have to
> find
> all documents including those elements. I could just reference them
> instead of inclusion, with entities for example, but then I might
> have a
> lot of work if I switch to a different computer.
>
>
> Any comments are appreciated
>
> Stephan

we use modular books, by using xinclude syntax. the physical files contain
single chapters, appendices, etc. xinclude is a great thing, as it allows
pretty fine grained control over the parts being included into the final
book. all the chapters themselves are valid docbook documents.

the next step for us is setting up version control system.

editing is done via xml spy, the whole transformation process is managed via
a self-written win32 environment with an gui.

wbr,
arno sosna