RE: DOCBOOK: Choice of environment for working with Docbook?

["Gershon Leib Joseph" <gershon at mainsoft dot com>]

Jean,

Summary:
I recommend you use XML rather than SGML version of DocBook for your needs.
I do recommend you use DocBook. Depending on your documentation needs, you
may need to create a subset or extension of DocBook. Epic is the best
choice. Period. You need not purchase their DocBook Application--you can
create your own. If you are familiar with SGML/XML markup, FOSIs and DSSSL,
it will cost you very much less than 15000 Euros to set up. If these
acronyms sound like a foreign language to you, it is probably worth spending
the 15k. I personally feel that 15k is too expensive for what you get. After
spending 4000 Euros on Epic Publisher, you kind of expect the DocBook
application to be thrown into the package too...

Details:
I have taken three companies from Word to *ML, the last of which was to XML.
All 3 cases were for technical documentation departments.

Company A is a leading telecommunications company, with a documentation team
of 12. I set up their entire SGML application suite, which includes ADEPT
Editor for authoring, ADEPT Publisher for printing, DynaText for online
delivery on CD and DynaWeb for web delivery. They use a proprietary DTD,
though structurally it has a lot in common with DocBook.

Company B had a very small budget, so we used WordPerfect9 for authoring and
publish via Jade and DSSSL stylesheets. I developed a DocBook extension for
them. The main reason for using SGML was because they required single
sourcing to produce different versions of the document using conditional
processing. This processing was impossible to set up using VBA.

Company C is where I currently work. We now use DocBook 4 (beta) and Epic 3
Publisher. I have set up authoring and publishing using my own FOSIs and
DSSSL stylesheets. I am still fine tuning the web publishing function. I
have knocked the socks off my senior management by delivering in several
formats from a single source, in less time it used to take them to prepare
only printed versions from Word. And the quality provided by Epic for both
print and HTML is far superior to Word.

I often use Omnimark to produce HTML where I need fine control of the
output. I also use Omnimark to convert from Word to XML.

For your purposes, one or more copies of Epic Publisher and Epic Editor for
the rest is all you need (provided you already have Adobe Acrobat installed
on the Publisher computers).

You certainly can train Word people to work with Epic. I suggest you use a
qualified Arbortext trainer for this. Some Word users will move easily to
Epic, while others will require hand-holding. Have patience. All Word users
eventually learn to think in terms of "writing structured content" instead
of "presenting some content in a particular format". Some Word users like to
see what it "looks" like, long after they have converted to Epic. Your
initial authoring FOSI is very important here. It must display the
information in a format similar to your primary output format. Most of our
writers found it difficult to go back to work in Word after one month of
"structured authoring".

I personally maintain that authoring and publishing in Epic is 4 X faster
than doing the equivalent in Word, and the quality of the results is far
superior. Even Word lovers eventually admit that they write twice as much
content now than they used to in Word. I probably should not say this too
loud, but I have been able to shrink the size of documentation teams to 1/3
their original size and still output more than the original team was
producing using Word. I have never used this to sell structured authoring to
anyone, but it proves itself true after a while, and it makes the investment
in moving to structured authoring even more worthwhile for the company.

Please note that I do not in any way work for Arbortext. I am just a
satisfied customer, who has tried virtually every SMGL/XML authoring and
publishing tool that exists. Er, I also use emacs, but I have not been able
to convince any company to force their technical writers to use it ;-)

I hope this helps.

Gershon.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-docbook@lists.oasis-open.org
[mailto:owner-docbook@lists.oasis-open.org]On Behalf Of Jean Jordaan
Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2000 6:06 PM
To: Docbook (E-mail)
Subject: DOCBOOK: Choice of environment for working with Docbook?

Dear Norm, and all

  This mail is a request for advice: what software do you use to
  author Docbook?

...