RE: DOCBOOK: General roadmap questions

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

Stephen,

You're probably better off taking these issues up with an Arbortext sales
representative. Also, if we're going to be discussing Arbortext
applications, we should move this thread over to the DOCBOOK-APPS list.

One of the advantages of SGML is the separation of format from content.
Thus, authoring should be viewed as "adding content", regardless of how you
plan on publishing your document. You can take the same SGML or XML
document, and publish it as many differently formatted printed books, or as
many differently formatted HTML pages, etc. Formatting is applied at the
publishing stage. An example is printing versions of your document--one with
9 point font size for technicians, and another with larger print for end
users.

When authoring with WYSIWYG tools, the author gets just one possible view of
the document.

When it comes to publishing your SGML document, the application has a lot of
work to do. It has to intelligently merge your content with the formatting
stylesheet to produce the desired output with the anticipated quality.
There's little point in paying 20 times for the print technology, for
example, when you can get by with one or two print stations.

Authors don't need to use final-quality print-outs while writing a document.
Thus, by separating out the various functions, Arbortext (and other
companies do this too) can offer an "affordable" authoring tool. In fact,
the LE version is a reduced-features version of Epic Author for occasional
contributors who don't need all the features of Epic Author. I use Epic
Author for authors, and have one Epic Publisher, which can serve 10-20
authors, depending on how much paper documentation you deliver. If I had
software engineers who needed to occasionally write documentation, I would
have them use Epic Author LE, since it's got the basic features they would
need. Note that both Epic Author versions can print--they print the
authoring view, much like a printout from an HTML browser. These printouts
are good enough for checking your content.

Hope this helps.

Gershon.

| -----Original Message-----
| From: owner-docbook@lists.oasis-open.org
| [mailto:owner-docbook@lists.oasis-open.org]On Behalf Of Stephen Rasku
| Sent: Thursday, June 01, 2000 11:06 PM
| To: docbook@lists.oasis-open.org
| Subject: RE: DOCBOOK: General roadmap questions
|
|
| We are looking at using DocBook for our internal documentation.  I
| have been able to succesfully generate a DocBook document using just a
| text editor but this isn't a reasonable solution for marketing and
| even our programmers will probably show less resistance if there are
| some easy to use tools available.
|
| I have tried to navigate the Arbortext site, but it isn't clear what
| we would need.  I am not sure why they have split their product into
| so many pieces.  For example, what is the difference between the Epic
| Editor and Epic Editor LE?  And why would I need a separate
| application to print -- is it not possible to print from within the
| editor?
|
| --
| Stephen Rasku			E-mail:	stephen@tgivan.com
| Senior Software Engineer	Phone:	(604) 872-6676
| TGI Technologies		Web:	http://www.tgivan.com/
|