Subject: Re: Switching to XML
From: "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com>
To: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
Cc: David Fetter <david@fetter.org>,
	Guillaume Lelarge <guillaume@lelarge.info>,
	Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>, pgsql-docs@postgresql.org,
	David Blewett <david@dawninglight.net>
In-Reply-To: <200612101737.10958.peter_e@gmx.net>
References: <4579720E.4000707@dawninglight.net>
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	<1165767023.13210.25.camel@localhost.localdomain>
	<200612101737.10958.peter_e@gmx.net>
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Organization: Command Prompt, Inc.
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2006 08:49:41 -0800
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On Sun, 2006-12-10 at 17:37 +0100, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> > 1. Tools. SGML tools are not as actively developed as the XML ones.
> > No you can not use XML tools with SGML as effectively.
> >
> > If I am wrong on #1 Peter, fine. Prove it.  You keep telling us we
> > are wrong but are unwilling to share where or how.
> 
> Well, such statements are quite impossible to reason about because 
> a "tool" can be just about anything.  There is no doubt that SGML tools 
> are not as actively developed as the XML ones.  That could, for 
> example, be because SGML is much older and stabilized and the tools 
> have matured.

O.k. again... what tools? Either provide some specific solutions or back
out of the conversation.

The standard tools used in the FOSS arena (specifically linux) for
Docbook are OpenJade and DSSSL. OpenJade sees very little development. 

What tools do you use? Are they the same listed in Appendix G (I am
assuming so)

> 
> But none of this interests me unless someone can come up with a specific 
> completion of the following sentence: "We need to do $ACTION because 
> that allows us to use tool $TOOL, which is more efficient at doing 
> $TASK than the currently used tool."

We need to do migrate our docs to XML because that allows us to use
xml-po, which is more efficient at helping translation than the
currently used process.

Close enough?


> > 2. We have two regional projects that take a lot of hard earned time
> > to work around the lackluster state of our source documentation,
> > namely SGML.
> 
> I know of one regional project that has done documentation work, the 
> French one.  (I'm sorry that I missed the other one.)  Their reason for 
> moving to XML was (a) to use FOP for (b) producing print output more 
> efficiently.  But you can use FOP right now, so (a) is not a good 
> reason, and we have fixed the print output generation now, so (b) isn't 
> a reason either.

No, they also wanted easier stylesheet maintenance. 

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake


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