[ANNOUNCE] xorg-sgml-doctools-1.2

[Daniel Stone]

On Sun, Mar 04, 2007 at 05:15:41PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Sunday 04 March 2007, Daniel Stone wrote:
> >Okay, and you're missing the point.  DocBook is _not_ the final format.
> >It is used to generate HTML, PDF, roff, etc.  You write documentation in
> >DocBook, and users type man whatever.
> 
> That has never worked here.  Example:
> [root at coyote ~]# man docbook-utils
> No manual entry for docbook-utils
> 
> So where IS the bridge that will teach the user how to use it?

I don't think I'm getting through, somehow.

Users never deal with DocBook.  Full stop.

When I type './foo', it doesn't matter to me if it was originally C,
C++, or whatever.  It's compiled to bytecode, right?

Similarly with DocBook.  You write documentation in DocBook, and then
convert it to something else, for the users.  People reading the HTML or
PDFs online don't care that it was once DocBook.  People reading the
manpages on their systems with 'man XInput' or whatever the document is
called[0], don't know or care that it was once DocBook.

Sort of how you're probably unaware that most of the generated
PostScript documents floating around were generated that way from
_FrameMaker_.  Not just FrameMaker, but a version so old, that we no
longer have tools that can read it.  After getting in touch with the
vendor, we finally have a solution whereby one person can run an old
version of FrameMaker and save it in a version the new one can read, and
then get it into a sensible format ...

If you don't understand this time, then I really am sorry, but I've done
all I can.

> >So, I don't see any problem at all.
> 
> Obviously you are privy to the secret incantations to make it work.  I 
> would like to join that club but my attempts to carve a working key have 
> so far, been both very frustrating, and an utter failure.

I can see why, because you're attempting to solve the wrong problem.

As an aside, I tend to lose interest whenever I see 'M$'.  Particularly
if the analogy makes no sense.

Cheers,
Daniel

[0]: I can't remember the names of all the documents in xorg-docs, so
     don't try this one, you'll only end up confused.
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