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Re: General roadmap questions


I am really new to Docbook/DSSL (one year or so), but I would like
to share my experience with Wolfgan Laung.

- I used to hate Emacs. Recently, I have concluded that if you expend some
time studying it, it's a really nice environment for SGML when using in
conjunction
with PSGML and some extra dictionary if you need it, as it was my case.
Also,
you can (or should?) make some adjust in the default configuration in order
to
make it easier to your staff (keyboard, etc...).
It's nice that you have the option to insert only those Elements or tags
(or end-tags) which are
allowed in a particular context. No need to worry if it is right or no. The
same for
Attributes.
If you think <cite>(The emacs SGML mode may even be sufficient for most of
our tecchies.)</cite>
you can stick to Emacs (IMHO).

- The though question: Rendering.  Until now I use rtf, although I have
done some test with
"Jade -tex" for dvi an ps files.
My preference for rtf is due to the way we used to elaborate the
documentation in the past
(partially, also in the present). But my goal is to migrate to a
"only-ps-and-pdf" solution, using
Acrobat Distiller to generate the pdf files. For what I have seen, Jade and
Latex works quite
well in producing dvi files (the best: tables), but I may be wrong here
(not enough experience).
Also, I think you can achieve some degree of cutomization for headers and
footers modifying
some DSSSL files and creating you own rules. But for what I have read in
this list and in the
docbook-apps list, you can't expect the same as you could do whit
FrameMaker, Page Maker or the
like. Anyway, my thought about it is "you can't have all". I needed to
sacrifice some particular
page designs in order to get better content (which, by the way, is the goal
with all this stuff).

- About "scheme": Fine if you need query retrieval of your docs and post
publishing of the
results. But for me: too much programming languages. I do prefer to use
perl, which I also use
to actively update the docs and pages in my intranet. The other tool I use
is Microsoft ODBC
driver. I don't know if I will be able to go on just with only those tools.

- As you can see, almost all free.

Regards,
Juan R. Migoya

Wolfgang Laun wrote:

> Hello Group,
>
> Our situation: ~60 engineers, UNIX/Solaris for SW development,
> Personal workstations running NT and (a few, but growing) Linux.
>
> During past years we've been using Digital Runoff, DecWrite, Interleaf
> and now MS-Word for technical documentation, and things have not really
> improved. For instance, automatic generation of documents has not been
> made easier, and only a few doc's written in LaTeX have lasted over the
> years without conversion.
>
> Recently I've come across the DocBook, and I think SGML/XML would be an
> excellent choice for (at least) our generated documents. If we can
> give something to the WISYWIG adepts, we might even get rid of MS-Word.
> (The emacs SGML mode may even be sufficient for most of our tecchies.)
>
> Now my questions:
> - What would be the best way for producing hardcopy? (I understand that
>   rtf is an out-of-the-box result of applying jade, but what's the best
>   way (w/o starting MS-Word) of getting PostScript from that?
>   Star Office (with a simple example) works OK, but we need to do this
> from
>   a script, in the background. Is TeX the best way? Is there a way via
>   rtf to pdf/Acrobat?)
>
> - For hardcopy, we'll have to modify the stylesheets to include our
>   custom page headers and footers. (Is that correct?) Generally: Is
>   DSSSL ("never achieved widespread use") the best bet, or should we
>   rather use CSS? XSL??
>
> - Scheme: Are there any substantial differences to (e)lisp? I haven't
> found
>   any documentation on Scheme (but I admit I didn't try hard).
>
> - It doesn't all have to be free. We're also investigating commercial
>   products. Any experiences?
>
> Thank you,
> -Wolfgang

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