Re: Docbook tools

["David C. Mason" <dcm@redhat.com>]

Eric Bischoff <ebisch@cybercable.tm.fr> writes:

> - It is indeed a very good idea to use RPM packages for those using
> RedHat-based
> systems (I am one, I am using LinuxPPC for Macintosh ;-) ). What is
> the reason
> for putting both the 3.0 version and the 3.1 version of the DocBook
> DTD in
> the RPM archive? It makes the file bigger.
> 

It is unfair to compare a system like RPM to tar.gz or other
archiving/compression formats. RPMs *add* functionality, thus
sometimes larger files. Mark is working on other packages.


> - Have you encountered the same problems we have encountered with
> non-English
> languages and the TeX backend ? We did not manage to make the Babel
> package
> work with French, and we still feel very unsecure about Corean,
> Chinese (all
> encodings), Greek and Russian. We also would love to switch to
> Unicode encoding
> for all non-latin languages. Have you already any experience about
> that ? 
> 

This is actually a problem with TeX itself. The French style file
(french.sty) now has some major licensing issues thanks to its creator
changing the license. The file was removed from the CTAN repository
and it breaks things like jadetex that still try to call it. This
should be fixed in Mark's latest version but you might find older
versions still rely on the style file. 

As you might guess, this is bad news for anyone who wants to write
French documents and use TeX but as long as they want to agree to the
new license they can still use it. I would recommend French users to
make html with a big juicy note as to why there is no PostScript or
TeX files.

As to the CKVJ languages, there is now support for Japanese in DocBook
but you will need to write language files for other languages. These
files are part of the Stylesheets and are really quite easy to write
as long as you have someone who knows the language. TeX should be able
to handle the CKVJ languages fine, I don't know about Greek. Russian
works fine but make sure you have the latest stylesheets as there is a
new ISOcryl(or whatever its called) file in there. Norman Walsh can
speak to this a little better than me.
 
Good Luck, its great to see you guys moving to DocBook, this is a
great step for your project and mine(GNOME) to start sharing things
like a help browser backend.

Cheers,

Dave